


Your Eyes Close

by NecromanticNoir



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Reality, Character Turned Into Vampire, Human Trafficking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:31:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NecromanticNoir/pseuds/NecromanticNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Harry discovers Severus Snape’s sexual attraction to him is in a courtroom. A story from Snape's point of view, set after Deathly Hallows, about how far you have to go to find the one that you love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Eyes Close

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in the 'First Time for Everything' Fest hosted by the Snape_Potter IJ / LJ community under username Necromanticnoir.

 

_‘I'll wait here, for you, for I'm broken down._

_I'm coming down this time,_

_For my heart lies far and away_

_Where they took you down,_

_Let them over to your house,_

_Where I'm broken._

_Down by the people if they let you breathe_

_Don't give a damn if you still can't see,_

_Still my heart beats for you have become_

_All I lost and all I hoped for._

_But I must carry on_

_Always one_

_Never broken.’_

 

 

 

“Usually one starts these interviews by explaining the process to the client but… Everyone knows you’ve been on trial before. This is hardly your first time.”

“It was nearly twenty years ago.”

“I assume you want to mount a defence? You, ah, have the money to pay me?”

“I have money. What I want, however, is this to be resolved out of court. There is evidence that… I believe the Prosecution has that… must not become public knowledge.”

“What evidence is that? Mr Snape?”

 

~

_Long, thin fingers hovered over a cauldron’s grey, glittering contents._

_They clenched in frustration - then withdrew, as the liquid within swirled and smoked._

_After a few moments’ pause, the fingers returned, sprinkling a dark powder across the undulating surface._

_The liquid turned black._

 

~

 

“What evidence is that? Mr Snape?”

Snape’s lawyer has hair the colour – and texture – of molasses. Combed back from his face into a greasy ponytail, it clashes horribly with his sickly yellow robes.

 Snape’s own hair has long since bypassed the classification of ‘greasy’.

Six weeks in St Mungo’s criminally insane ward, then a transfer to Azkaban, with no access to anything but a bucket of cold, dank water, makes even a man who cares as little for his appearance as Snape feel… self-conscious.

No wonder the lawyer – Walter Somebody (he was the cheapest option available in these desperate times) – sits as far away from Snape as possible.

He has his share of Dumbledore’s will to bargain with, but he needs to eke it out. He could afford a shorter trial with a more expensive lawyer, but considering Snape’s life, the prosecution could carry on the shit-slinging for months. He needs to be prepared for the long haul.

“They raided my personal quarters. You know the charges being brought against me,” Snape hisses, motioning to the parchments littering the table between them.

“Murder, yes, and production of potions of an illegal nature concerning another party – which always means it’s sex related. Were you spying on someone?”

Snape sighs, letting his head fall forward wearily.

 “We can try to get the court to overlook it,” Walter snorts, in a tone that does not inspire Snape with confidence, and starts scratching away lazily with a purple quill. “Every man is allowed his desires, eh? Who hasn’t used a potion to have a sex dream about somebody they fancy?”

“Do you know what my potion does? It enables one to enter sexual fantasies as though one were really there. Enables one to… act out one’s desires in a physical manner!”

It sickens Snape to say it. But, he supposes, it will be worse in court.

Life is like a nightmare.

“Yes, it sounds like a violation, but we don’t have time to focus on something like this. Your main charge is murder, and we only have a week to work on our defence there. What makes this so serious? You’re not suggesting we give this sex charge priority?”

They must have been the same age, Walter and him; both pushing forty.

In other circumstances, Snape could have belittled his intelligence; looked down upon Walter. But what was the use? In the scheme of things, despite being a Professor - being Headmaster of the largest wizarding school in the country - Snape was still, now, once again… the man on the wrong side of the table.

“No-one must find out, that is my only priority,” Snape’s voice is thick with self-loathing.

“No-one at all, or a specific no-one? Fantasising about someone inappropriate, eh? Oh hell. You were. Who?”

Walter looks up and sees Snape’s face. His own falls.

“Just to make things worse! Who is it? A… Not a student of yours?”

 

~

_Snape had to catch hold of the cauldron for balance as his feet landed, abruptly._

_Then, terrified of overturning its contents, he recoiled – and collapsed, thrashing about on the flagstones like a caught fish._

_Muttering darkly from the floor, he sat up. Head spinning, hair in disarray, nose damp and eyes wet._

_Thank God he was alone to suffer such indignities._

_He regarded the cauldron with a bone-weary sigh._

_Its contents did hold some potential, but he was unsure. He was too weary for this._

_He regarded his other options coolly._

_Four further cauldrons bubbled away in the dimness, glittering like dark jewels._

_Snape’s groin throbbed._

 

~

 

Snape looks at the wall. Stares at it until little black dots begin to form in front of his eyes.

“You have to tell me, Snape, I’m your lawyer.”

He only dimly hears the words. He has already been dragged through the courts and before the Wizengamot before, at the tender age of twenty.

He has been the subject of publicity for years about his past, and reviled his whole life long. He has changed sides, but then found his job was to pretend that he hadn’t…  He has spied and lied and either been in the wrong - or pretended to be - for a lifetime.

But he has never had his personal thoughts – his weaknesses - dragged through the mud before. Even his childhood attachment to Lily Potter always remained purely between him and Albus.

But now, something far darker is about to become public knowledge.

Snape isn’t sure he will survive it. His humiliation will be complete.

“Ptr.”

He hears his voice, but he can’t feel himself speaking. Perhaps someone else has stolen his voice. Perhaps, if he can disassociate from himself, he can pretend this whole sordid affair concerns another party, what a pathetic person -

“I can’t hear you, Snape!”

“Potter! Fuck! Harry fucking Potter!”

“Shit! Shit, Snape… Shit. Is that what those phials the Prosecution have contain? I need to see the contents -”

“Nobody needs to see them! Least of all Potter! You have to help me,” Snape reaches across the table in desperation, but Walter shrinks back from his grasp as though he were a leper.

There is no comfort to be found here.

“Easy, ok? Do you know how many phials the prosecution have? They’re keeping their evidence very close-guarded. But you made the potions, you’d know! How many?”

“No. No, they can’t -”

“Snape! I don’t know what planet you’re on but there is no settling out of court! You’re being tried for murder, who’s going to be paid off? Now you can bet your life they’ll bring this up as evidence of your perversity to put a slur on your character in the murder trial – would you sit on evidence that good, if you were them? Tell me exactly what is in those phials! How many are there?”

“I… maximum of five. If they got them all.”

 

~

_It was the dead of night._

_The cauldrons still simmered._

_Each had taken months to weave; to construct. The brewing had demanded the most intricate of spells, the most expensive of ingredients. The highest level of skill._

_Snape brooded silently, stood in the dark. A sentinel._

_In his own lifetime, he would never possess Potter. That he knew with finality, and it felt like lead lining his stomach. Heavy, the weight of death._

_There was nothing to hope for, here._

_He regarded his options, slowly._

 

~

 

“If it will please the Court… Exhibit A: five phials of potion, each with different contents, taken from the Accused’s rooms after the final battle. You will get the hang of them by the end, but the first… that will be the shock. Before you adjust to the perversity of the man’s mind.”

First, there is the pre-trial hearing.

Outlining the direction in which both Prosecution and Defence will try to take.

Present is only Snape, Walter Somebody, the Prosecution’s vast legal team (each in pinstriped robes) and the judge and jury.

“This is a man who murdered his mentor and salivated after one of his students.”

Snape tries to tune it out.

“Which student? You will learn as the trial continues. But it will shock you. Prepare to be shocked.”

The Prosecution seem to have a hefty case constructed, for a trial that was only ordered five days ago. Snape was released from St Mungo’s and picked up by the Aurors approximately two hours later, then informed that his trial started on Monday.

 

~

 

Outside the court room (Walter’s face considerably more sweaty than when they went in) one of the pinstriped witches brushes past Snape, nose crinkled in revulsion.

“We told Potter everything, of course,” she whispers nastily, into Snape’s ear.

“No!” Snape barks out, then claps a manacled hand over his mouth, going white.

“What did you say to him?” Walter demands, puffing over, hackles rising. “You are being inflammatory to my client outside of court!”

“There was evidence concerning him that is about to be made public - he had a right to know the gory details!” the witch smirks.

Snape recognises that smirk – it is one he has had many times, after catching a student looking at ‘Playwitch’ in class. Sadistic satisfaction.

 

~

_Snape, perched over the softly simmering cauldron, fumes puffing against his lank, sallow face, closed his eyes._

_It was four in the morning._

_In an hour, he needed to be up preparing for the coming day. Hogwarts was a withering stone husk under his control. Snape, the Headmaster of a living ruin._

_Potter, there had been no word of in weeks. Snape was growing desperate; sometimes, the clawing fear threatened to rise out of his throat and choke him. His worry for the reckless boy’s safety was second only to his cruellest weakness – the suffocating desire that had infected him like a disease in Potter’s fifth year._

_He had no will to live, personally; no need to prolong his life for the sake of living. What drove him was the sickening injustice that one could covet, could desire, could love so fucking much - and all in vain._

_Of course, he was used to injustice. He had spent his whole life looking, wanting things that had always remained just out of reach._

_But it burned within him that there might be some variation of events that might have caused Potter to… look back. As his own death approached – and it was coming soon, he knew, as the skies darkened with each passing day – the thought that he had been cheated out of his life with Potter became smothering._

_Three more drops, stir counter-clockwise with a slight flick of the wrist…_

_And there it was._

_He had lost count of the attempts he had made. Well into the hundreds. He had watched Potter in a variety of different lives, but in not one of his initial attempts had Potter looked upon Snape with anything other than loathing – or, worse, pity._

_In recent attempts, they had been friends, several times; the worst of which was when Snape was invited to be Best Man at Potter’s wedding. He still shuddered at the ‘memory’ of biting into his tongue to stop himself sinking to his knees before Potter at the altar._

_No, only a certain type of relationship would do – anything else was just further torment. And death was far preferable to that._

_He put down the ladle, and lowered his greasy face towards the bubbling liquid. Perhaps, after a few tweaks, this one might just…_

 

~

 

“That witch is a lying old tart – Potter hasn’t been told. The trial starts properly in two days and I saw the witness list - he’s not even involved! He’s been approached to join the Prosecution as a witness, but has refused. They’re playing on this potion stuff because they want Potter to side against you. They want Potter to forget that you were Dumbledore’s man and think of you as this sick old pervert -”

Snape’s relief is short lived. Now, he will have to see Potter take the news first hand. Will have to watch the light of revulsion dawning across that young face and smothering any kindly feeling that may have remained.

The night before the first phial is due to be showed to the court, Snape considers ending it all.

The realisation that the imminent threat of being Kissed has nothing on the thought of Potter finding out how badly Snape desires him is… gut-wrenching.

His humiliation will be complete tomorrow, at the look of disgust on that young face.

 

~

_Vampirism had never been an interest of Snape’s – his teenage years, whilst gothic, were never maudlin in that sense. He found, however, that there was some appeal in this ‘fantasy’: himself as a newly-turned vampire, thrumming with power, and Potter as one of his donors. Potter was in fear of him; submitted to him meekly (for the most part; Potter’s tenacious spirit was not yet dead, or so Snape hoped)._

_Inhabiting the body of this Vampire Severus Snape… happened with a jolt._

_Snape had been standing in his study, hunched over the cauldron, phial in hand. One sip away from… what? Bliss, perhaps? Landing in a ‘fantasy’ was like Apparating in, but into another body – another version of himself._

_It was an unnerving feeling. His own memories warred with that of this other Snape – two persons inside one head. Warred, then… merged. Snape had memories that were not his own lying alongside his real ones; seeping into one another._

_More importantly, however, he now had Potter, kneeling at his feet._

_“Do you still want to feed?” Potter asked, lifting his head; looking confused at Snape’s hesitancy._

_“As usual,” Snape croaked out._

_Potter rose obediently, and bared his neck by unbuttoning his shirt - by a meagre three buttons. Pathetic._

_“More,” Snape snapped. Potter blinked._

_“More?”_

_“More. Naked, in fact.”_

_“I… what?”_

_“Do it.”_

_“You have other slaves for that!”_

_“Take your clothes off!”_

_Potter glanced about wildly, but they were alone in a vast dark hall. Fingers clenching and unclenching, Potter rose gracelessly, and hopped about from foot to foot._

_“Why?” he finally asked._

_“Because your body is beautiful and I want it,” Snape snarled._

_Potter’s eyes grew very round._

_“Look, I don’t want a debate about it,” Snape snapped, when Potter opened his mouth again._

_To demonstrate such, Snape pulled his erection out of his trousers._

_“Put that in your mouth!”_

_Potter’s mouth fell open._

_“Which do you want?” he stammered. “Me naked, or me to suck that?”_

_“Both. Now, if you please. Do as you are told!”_

_Watching Potter disrobe, the look of disbelief still plastered across the boy’s face, was priceless. Then Snape no longer cared, as Potter was pushing his boxers down skinny thighs._

_Potter here was thin, as thin as Snape’s version, and wiry. Doe-eyed and quivering, the boy shuffled closer on his knees, skin prickling with cold all over, nipples tightening. His mouth opened and Potter leant forward, still confused, dazed even. Poised inches from Snape’s cock, he moistened his lips awkwardly. Then started licking Snape’s purple erection with just the tip of his pink tongue. Made a face. Licked again._

_“Why do I have to -”_

_Snape put a hand on the back of Potter’s messy hair and forced his mouth down around Snape’s erection. Potter made a gargling sound and breathed through his nose - then choked, eyes huge. He batted at Snape’s hand and pulled back. Looking up, he glowered at Snape._

_Snape merely raised an eyebrow, and Potter sighed, then stuck his tongue out again. Wet licking sounds filled his ears._

_In those early days, Snape thought of little except enjoying the ‘fantasies’ he visited. Taking the opportunities to have Potter sexually – a sharp contrast to his own life, where Potter would not touch him to scratch him._

_“Take it deeper,” Snape commanded, and Potter (who had clearly not done this before) gripped the base of his cock in frustration, before trying to open his throat around it. Snape could feel Potter shudder against the gag reflex, but the wet heat, slippery and spongy around his poor neglected flesh, was so beautiful. He pushed his cock in and out of Potter’s mouth leisurely, until Potter’s lips and chin were wet and his eyes and nose runny. Then he came down Potter’s throat._

_Or tried to – Potter thrashed in surprise and spat his come all over Snape’s thigh, grimacing at the taste. Snape didn’t care. Potter, however, wiped his mouth and nose with his hand – then tried to clean Snape up by grabbing his boxers and dabbing at the wetness -_

_“I’ll get another slave to clean you up -” Potter began, but Snape wasn’t interested._

_“No. Stay. Lie on your front and spread your legs wide. Wider.”_

 

~

 

“We hardly need to see this evidence – every man is entitled to his own privacy! Which was invaded, in Mr Snape’s case, by the destruction of his personal property and removal of the items which the Prosecution now calls ‘evidence’. All they are evidence of is that this man is flesh and blood, which is hardly a crime!”

Walter is trying, but he is already huffing and puffing like he has run a marathon.

“Perhaps not,” sneers the pinstriped bitch witch. “But when the object of a man’s sexual fantasies is someone in the public interest, someone who was supposed to be under Mr Snape’s charge at the time and had been since he was eleven – and who would have been underage when some of these were dreamed up… Then it becomes an act of criminality to create such potions starring him!”

There is a mutter in the courtroom, a murmured assent.

Snape tries not to hang his head, but it feels so heavy.

“And, how do we know that these potions that were created by Mr Snape were not sold for personal gain?” she adds, eyes gleaming. Snape hates her; wishes a thousand horrible curses on her.

“That is pure speculation, I demand that it be stricken from the records!” Walter cries.

“But now we come to the worst part – the name of the poor individual who was subject to Mr Snape’s sickening fantasies!”

Snape closes his eyes.

His long dark hair falls over his face. This is it. His moment of deepest shame.

“It is none other than… Harry Potter!”

Perhaps, if he pretends he is already dead… (Predictably, the courtroom goes mad. Cries, screams – Snape keeps his eyes resolutely closed.)

When he opens them, he forces himself to look up. To look over at the public gallery.

He knows who stands there.

Weasley and Granger are walking out, as are several others. Minerva has her hands over her mouth and is looking directly back at him, eyes hard, shaking her head in horror.

And Potter…

His face is pale (and thin, still too thin) but his eyes hold a mixture of betrayal and… confusion.

Snape cannot make it out.

 

~

_The liquid bubbled so black. Tar in the cauldron; stinking too._

_Almost ingestible._

_Unpalatable._

_Unthinkable._

_And yet, it beckoned to him._

_He had yet to try it out, for the fear the temptation may be too irresistible. Once he enters, oh to remain there forever…_

_In this ‘fantasy’, the Dark Lord had triumphed. Everything Snape had worked for in his real life had failed._

_This other version of himself however, was instrumental in the success, and had been duly rewarded, with the body of the young ‘saviour’. Potter, alive and unharmed, belonged entirely to him, for his pleasure and delectation._

_It was a fantasy he would never even dare to hold, not even in life._

_He did not know whether he could stand it._

_Or, worse, whether he would love it too much._

_Potter as a whore - worse, as his own personal concubine…_

_A fantasy like a dark jewel; and sickly sweet, like rare honey._

_Snape had never been a physical person, but his body lit on fire by just one glance from Potter’s emerald eyes. He hovered by this cauldron night after night, long into the early hours of the morning._

_One night, at around three, his curiosity and weakness finally won out._

_Shamed, and unable to meet his own eyes in the shimmering reflective surface of the potion, Snape took a sample._

_Somehow, it seemed to glitter more darkly than the others as he lifted to vial to his lips, eyes tightly closed against the humiliation of it…_

 

~

 

“There’s been a request, Snape,” Walter finishes, shuffling papers about as he starts to rise.

“Grand,” Snape snorts, waving a hand indifferently in thin air. Slouched in his chair, thinking only about the pointlessness of it all…

“From Potter.”

Snape sits up.

“What does he want?” Fingers drumming impatiently upon the table top.

“To see the evidence the court saw today, of course. The Prosecution are pushing for it. They think if they can twist Potter in their favour, he will give evidence against you.”

“He must not see them!” Snape barks, rising, pushing his chair over -

“Perhaps we can broker a deal. That he only sees one or two?” Walter looks pleased by his idea. The imbecile.

“None! Not one!”

Walter’s smile fades.

“This is not within our control, Snape!” Walter barks. “We are lucky, given Potter’s social standing, that he can’t just walk in and take them! Especially as they all star him, which he is well aware now…”

Snape puts his head in his hands.

“Now I am suggesting, alright, that Potter be encouraged to view the transcripts of some of these things – you know, a verbal description, instead of actually seeing them for himself? I’m going to try to argue it’s in his own good, stops him getting all traumatised. You may think you have a beautiful thing going with Potter, but that stuff’s messed up.”

“I did not choose the content of… Never mind.”

“You didn’t choose them? Snape, they’re your fantasies!”

“I said never mind!”

“Well good, because Potter doesn’t ever need to see those, or that’s what I’ll say. I can’t believe we are focussing on this now when I ought to be preparing for the much larger problem of getting you acquitted of murder! This is why they did it, of course: to focus our efforts into this lesser but much more humiliating charge, and then hit you with being Kissed at the end!”

“I don’t care about that. All I care is that Potter not see the content of those phials. Plead guilty to the murder if you have to. But keep him away.”

“You’re joking? You’d let them Kiss you to prevent him seeing you take him in the arse?”

 

~

_The taste of the tar-black potion was rank and fetid on his lips; he wiped his mouth with his hand, wincing._

_He almost expected to see Voldemort immediately, but no._

_Instead, lying in an enormous canopied bed was the loveliest sight that Snape ever saw._

_Potter. Naked and curled up in his bed, sleeping sweetly._

_Snape approached, mesmerised; he leant against one mahogany bed post and watched Potter’s slender bare shoulder rise and fall. This Potter looked weary and careworn, even in sleep._

_Transfixed, torn and aching with longing, Snape climbed up onto the bed._

_The young man startled, and sat up, blinking rapidly._

_“Oh, sorry, Sn – sir. I just closed my eyes for a minute -”_

_Snape waved a hand, dismissively._

_“Sssh,” he murmured, softly. “You look tired.”_

_To his dismay, Potter scrambled up – to his even greater dismay, he heard a chain clank, and watched Potter crawl urgently out of his bed._

_Chained by one ankle, the boy scurried back towards a large iron cage in one corner of the room._

_Potter was chained to the cage. Inside the cage was a pillow and a blanket, and a glass of water._

_He could see the knobs on Potter’s spine._

_Snape’s blood boiled._

_“Stop!” he snapped, too harshly._

_Potter slid on the wooden floor in his haste and slipped._

_Snape drew his wand. The chain melted away and, to his horror, Potter’s eyes grew wide and terrified._

_“No! No don’t let them take me, I thought they gave me to you! They gave me to you, they can’t do this again, they can’t!”_

_Snape caught Potter by the wrist. The boy weighed almost nothing, like a ghost slipping through his fingers._

_“You aren’t going anywhere, be quiet,” he said, disturbed by Potter’s distress._

_Potter still refused to stay still, however._

_“I’m sorry, I do as you ask, don’t I? Please don’t send me back there, I know you’re the best option I could have got and I’m grateful, really…”_

_“Stop begging,” Snape spat._

_Potter was silent. Then he sagged, sinking to the floor, head in his hands._

_“You’re right. I used to be so much stronger than this.”_

_“Come… come here,” Snape ventured._

_He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in this young man’s embrace, but the Potter of this place was clearly in no mood for sex. Once, Snape might have tried to force the issue. But no more. He had seen too much._

_“You’re so…gentle tonight,” Potter muttered, leaning his head on Snape’s shoulder._

_“Am I not always?” Snape asked, carefully drawing Potter into his arms._

_Potter snorted._

_“Not often. Sorry, I didn’t mean -”_

_“It’s alright,” Snape sighed. “Just lie with me, here, and go to sleep.”_

_This was the first time he entered a ‘fantasy’ where Potter was sexually available, and did not return to his own life smelling of come._

_The first time he merely held Potter until the boy fell asleep, watched him in repose with tender longing, then returned. It changed something within him._

_Ruined something._

_He was doomed never to be satisfied in a ‘fantasy’ after that, but he did not know quite why._

 

~

 

There were other times, before and after that night. Other attempts, far more sexual.

 

~

_Potter was permanently aroused in one ‘fantasy’ he visited, having been the victim of an errant curse._

_Snape was not sure whether the Snape here had been trying to cure Harry, or was simply keeping him here to fuck. He assumed the former, as Harry slept in a small bedroom just off Snape’s lab._

_Snape found himself at a workstation, a potion bubbling away before him and a ladle in his hand. He barely had time to work out what was going on before the door opened._

_“I’m ready for my dose.”_

_Potter looked weary, resigned. He was wearing a loose fitting robe and his fingers were constantly scuttling towards his groin, then retreating back sheepishly. Snape almost wanted to laugh, but the young man looked like he was in pain._

_Stalling for time, as memories old and new swirled in his head, Snape glanced at the cauldron._

_“It will be ready soon. How are your… symptoms?”_

_“It isn’t ready? Shite. Um… It’s getting a bit… tricky, again. You know.”_

_“Describe what you mean.”_

_“I’m fucking hard,” Potter grumbled. “I barely slept.”_

_“Let me see, then,” Snape found himself saying._

_Potter’s eyes widened, but his fingers moved resignedly to slide open his robes, as though he had had to do this before. Snape watched Potter’s erection bob into view; saw the young man trembling as he laid his robe to the side. As he stared, Potter only seemed to get harder, redder, wetter; glistening..._

_“Please,” Potter whispered, eyes drifting closed and a single tear meandering down his cheek from under one set of lashes. “Help me.”_

_Snape set down the ladle. Licked his lips. Potter moaned unhappily and one hand drifted towards his erection - stopping just short of it._

_“Why stop?” Snape asked, low._

_“Because you said at… um… attending to it will only make things worse!”_

_“Forget what I said,” Snape snarled, striding forward. He grabbed both Potter’s ripe buttocks and pulled the young man flush rudely against him. Potter almost shrieked, hands flying up to grasp Snape’s shoulders._

_Snape kissed him once, hard, before releasing Potter and spinning him around. Dropping to his knees, he pushed Potter’s buttocks apart and set his tongue to the damp opening he found there, sucking at it hard, nipping with his teeth._

_Potter, eyes drifting shut with pleasure, writhed against him. Snape could hear the shuffling sound of skin on skin as Potter masturbated. Only a minute or so later, there was a soft scream. Come like cream splattered the flagstones before Potter’s bare feet._

_Looking up, between Potter’s legs, Snape inspected, and found, Potter to be hard still. He slipped a finger into Potter’s bottom, wet with his own saliva, and Potter cried out, parting his trembling legs._

_“Oh thank God, thank God!” Potter was babbling._

_Snape, one hand sliding his fingers in and out of Potter’s quivering arse, shifted himself and sat up to lap at Potter’s sticky erection._

_Potter, hands in his own hair, looking terrified and delighted all at once, barked out a cry and came helplessly all over Snape’s face._

_Blinking come out of his eyes, Snape sat back in surprise, listening to Potters rambling apologies._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I haven’t come in weeks - you should know! Oh God!”_

_Snape wiped his cheek and started licking Potter’s erection again, and Potter soon shut up. There was less come the next time. And the time after._

_Potter’s legs trembled like they were about to give out, so Snape pulled back from his mouth full of cock and shoved Potter to lean over the workstation. Potter instantly started butting his erection eagerly against the wood, but Snape let him, busy as he was with fumbling his own cock out of his trousers._

_Potter squeaked when Snape started to press into him, but it only took a moment for the boy to recover from his surprise before he was shouting about God again and pushing his bottom back eagerly. After several attempts, the muscle loosened, and Snape’s dick popped inside._

_Potter came again instantly, clenching around him blissfully._

_“Fuck yourself on me,” Snape commanded, fingers pinching at Potter’s flushed skin, at his hips – and Potter did so, gingerly at first, then more and more bravely each time._

_Finally Snape, impatient and frustrated, gripped Potter’s hipbones hard and shoved in, drilling into the boy hard over and over. Potter writhed and yelled (and orgasmed) around him, as Snape shoved his blunt cock over and over into the tight hole. Potter’s knees trembled and he sagged forward onto the desk, face mashed into the ingredients – but the young man’s questing hands travelled back, reaching for Snape’s hips and buttocks to pull him in tighter, harder._

_When Snape finally came, he was fucking the boy so hard he could feel the vicious slap of his balls almost painfully on Potter’s skin; feel the bump of Potter’s bruised knees on the work surface and see Potter’s skin flushed, scratched and sweating._

_He half collapsed across Potter’s back, panting into sweat-slicked hair, his cock softening but still burrowed inside Potter’s smaller body._

_“I… oh… That helped, I think. I think. I’m still… still pretty hard but… Thank you,” Potter whispered._

_Snape snorted. Gullible fool, to think Snape was screwing him for Potter’s medical benefit._

_Inside, however, Snape was quietly rejoicing. His hands roamed freely over Potter’s body, lit up with excitement. He could imagine a nice, tidy set up here. Potter, the willing patient, and Snape ‘treating’ him… with mouthfuls of cock._

_Until:_

_“So, can I have sex with other people, now?” Potter ventured, turning around and eyeing Snape cautiously._

_“What?” Snape growled._

_“I mean, we’d both rather be sleeping with other people, wouldn’t we. I… there’s other people I’d prefer to… if I’m allowed?”_

_Snape wanted to snap ‘no’, and bitterly warn the boy against sleeping with anyone but him – but what would be the point? If Potter’s heart was not in it… Once again, the joy leeched out of Snape’s soul and he slumped, defeated._

_Angry, he pulled out, wiping himself off on his robes and shoving his traitorous penis back into his trousers. He knew immediately that he had to go, that there was nothing here for him but jealousy and pain._

_Once again, the encounter was ruined._

_He was starting to understand why._

_“Yes,” he sighed. “Who… whoever you need to. It’s fine.”_

 

 ~           

 

“Potter has demanded a meeting. With you. Privately. None of us are allowed in! Do you know how unheard of that is during a murder trial? His little bushy-haired friend managed to wrangle it on the proviso that he only wants to discuss your obsession with him and not Albus Dumbledore; that it isn’t relevant. Bullshit! That lawyer bitch has managed to persuade them to have it tonight, too, when we were going to have our strategy meeting! Well you need to be here, Snape! We’ve had barely any time as it is, we need you at the meeting! I’m telling Potter no.”

“You will do no such thing!” Snape yells, rising to his feet.

“Snape! Relax! Now, you need to attend, how are we supposed to plan your defence without you?” Walter throws his hands up in despair.

“What time is Potter coming?”

“Here? You think they’d bring bright, lovely Harry Potter into this shit hole? You’d have to go out – another reason I think they’re trying to waste our time -” Walter grumbles.

“When do I leave?” Snape asks, trying to smooth down his hair.

“You’re really going? You disgust me. It’s six. And no, you don’t look alright, you look like shit, before you start preening for your little crush. Well, if you’re going to throw your life away like this, you need to at least try to persuade him to testify for you. Did you hear me? You need him to testify that you murdered Dumbledore at his demand!”

“I told you, I don’t care -” Snape growls at him.

“Do you have a death wish, Snape?” Walter shouts back.

“What do I have to live for? If you were me, would you have anything to look forward to?” Snape sneers at him, gratified when Walter falters and splutters. “I didn’t think so. I’ll be out from six.”

 

~

_The taste of the potions were becoming sickly, too sweet._

_Acrid, like bile._

_Or that could just be his own bitterness._

_He had had Potter in numerous different ways, but each Harry Potter he met felt like a stranger wearing that beautiful face.  In fairness, each ‘Potter’ he met had not had the same life experiences as his Harry. There was also no connection between the two of them, more often than not._

_He was used to being met with fire in his encounters with Potter. He never found that spark anywhere else._

_It was a bleak, and lonely existence. Each potion he tried made coming back to his real life as a monkish, detested pariah, with no knowledge of even Potter’s whereabouts, all the worse._

_One night, he lay quietly beside the young man after another empty encounter, and stared at the ceiling._

_Here, they were comrades, fighting some unknown evil, but Potter was older. Snape did not know whether the young man was still fighting Voldemort, or a new dark threat. Either way, the meeting began with strategy, with pacing and aggravation. Soon, however, Potter was taking off his clothes. The Snape in this ‘fantasy’ was clearly an outlet for Potter’s frustrations._

_The feeling of a naked body pressed beside his own had ceased in any way to be comforting. Instead of drawing solace from the touch and smell of warm skin, dark hair and pale limbs, each tryst was starting to leech something vital out of Snape._

_He rolled onto his side. This Harry Potter, who must be about twenty five, lay on his front, face pillowed on his arms. His head was turned towards Snape. His eyes were closed._

_“Harry,” Snape urges, softly._

_Harry opened his eyes, and Snape was engulfed in a sea of green._

_“Where are you?” Snape murmured._

_Harry’s brow furrowed in confusion._

_“It’s been weeks since we heard any news. I am worried that I can’t stall things much longer. What task have you been given? If you could only tell me, I could help you. I know you don’t trust me, but if you could only -”_

_“What are you on about, Auror Snape?” the young man asked, propping himself up and frowning at Snape._

_“How I wish I hadn’t been backed into a corner, how I wish I could be doing your task with you, instead of withering away at Hogwarts in that dead shell. Come back and face me – fight me, curse me, only be there with me -” Snape seized Harry by the waist and tried to strain Harry against him – but the man flinched back, lashing out with one hand, face screwed up._

_“Back off! I don’t know what planet you’re on -”_

_“That’s it – that spark, tell me you hate me! I find myself to be an unspeakable pervert. I… hardly know myself anymore! Tell me I’m a coward, even - just don’t -”_

_“You’re scaring me!”_

_Snape stopped._

_“Why can you not love me?”_

_Harry Potter looked at him like he had gone mad._

_“Love you, Snape?”_

_“Yes. I know I have little to recommend mys… But you’d want for nothing; not for devotion, nor affection - I can give affection, I am capable! I am sure of it, for the right person -”_

_“Have you been hit with a spell, Auror Snape?”_

_The sound of his own titled name was like a splash of cold water. Snape recoiled, curled in on himself, bitterly._

_“I-I’m sorry,” he stuttered, but the young man only regarded him suspiciously._

_It was time to leave, to go back to his cold bed. Alone._

 

~

 

As he enters the room, Potter stands. Wringing nervous fingers, the boy watches him approach the chair on the other side of the table.

This is the first time they have been this close since Snape almost died.

(At the last, he had failed. Years of searching: one option selected, one phial prepared. Slipped inside his robes, ready… Not perfect, by any means, but good enough. An escape.

But, in the end, when he ought to have died by Nagini’s bite, and gone, Snape had been mesmerised by a pair of emerald eyes. By the real pair of green eyes, the only ones he wanted to gaze into.

He had forgotten the phial entirely.

He has no idea where it is now.)

Snape reaches the table, then stands silent, hands manacled at his front. For once, he is glad of them. It lends him a restraint that he feels he does not possess.

He is so used to touching bodies that look like this one – but never this one, never this Harry.

Only this one will do.

Snape knows that now.

Electricity burns through Snape’s veins. Being so close to his Harry sets him on fire, but he just stands there, even though every nerve in his body is tingling.

Potter’s gaze falls to the manacles, the boy clearly oblivious to the effect he has on Snape.

“What are they for?”

“Your own protection, presumably,” Snape grits out.

He can see Potter swallow. The young man rallies fast, however, and motions for Snape to sit.

“Is this room bugged?” Snape asks, cautiously.

“No,” Potter says, as though proud. “Hermione had it checked. Well, she checked it.”

“My mind is at ease, then,” Snape says, sarcasm dripping like poison from his lips.

“Leave off, Hermione’s good and you know it. The prosecution lawyers think I’m only here to talk about… today… with you.”

“You’re not?” Snape raises one eyebrow.

“I’m here because they won’t let me anywhere near you to ask whether you want me to show them your memories and testify on your behalf about Dumbledore!” Potter hisses. “Well, do you?”

Snape is momentarily speechless.

“No,” he says, finally.

Potter looks at him like he has gone mad. He is used to it.

“Why not? I’d have been there sooner, except I didn’t even know you were having a trial! No-one tells me anything. How long have you been preparing your case?”

(Since Wednesday morning, Snape does not say.)

“It is of no consequence,” he says, aloud.

“No conse – Snape! It’s clear the prosecution have been working for months on this! And what was all that about, today? Hermione’s got this theory – she says they’re trying to deliberately put me off helping you. They’ve been asking me to testify against you! They clearly think if they make me run a mile with today’s revelations that I’ll agree. Is that what this is about? Have they… have they falsified evidence against you?”

Snape sighs.

“Calm down. No, they have not and yes, Miss Granger is probably correct. Let us talk about something else. How’s Teddy Lupin? Are you to be his Guardian?”

“Teddy? Teddy’s fine! Why aren’t you concentrating? What do you mean they haven’t falsified anything?”

“Surely you haven’t spent all day thinking those sordid details were entirely made up?”

“I… I didn’t know what to think… You’re telling me they’re not? That you… Oh.”

Potter sags in his chair a little. Snape’s back remains ramrod straight.

“So you do want… all those things.”

“Not those exact things, no,” Snape sighs.

“You don’t want them? But they’re your fantasies!” Potter cries. “I can’t understand why someone as intelligent and gifted as you spends all his free time making sex fantasy potions! Don’t you have anything better to do, or are you just that twisted?”

 

~

_Time was running out. He knew this._

_Soon, he feared he may be about to die, and he would be foolish to have all these options available and not to take one. But which?_

_Few experiences Snape had had, since he began his strange journey into the endless lives of himself and Harry Potter, were memorable by the end. Most blurred into a sea of soft limbs and gasping voices; and hollow, emotionless moments, driving Snape deeper into black despair._

_One potion, which he remembered clearly, had entered him into a strange, sanctuary-like monastery._

_Where, he quickly learned, Potter was an Oracle and Snape his aide. It was a beautiful ‘fantasy’; the sanctuary was on a secluded island in a blue tropical sea. Potter had developed the ability at eighteen to see the future. He, Snape, was Potter’s aide and guard._

_Himself and Potter seemed to spend their days trying to hone Potter’s magical ability._

_Potter was quiet, peaceful, and practically nude. The heat was like the lick of a warm tongue on their skin; even Snape was down to his shirtsleeves. Potter had the silkiest, sleekest golden skin – which Snape knew first hand._

_As the boy’s aide, he assisted with teaching Potter, feeding Potter, bathing Potter…_

_Himself and Potter, however, had taken vows of chastity._

_So, every morning and night, he bathed beautiful naked Harry in a bath of milk, sponging the young man’s skin with tenderness and reverence, as Harry leaned back against him and sighed blissfully…_

_Snape felt the sigh down to his bones._

_But his vows prevented him from acting upon his deep, forbidden desire._

_It was a relief._

_By this time Snape, sick of barking out his orgasms into indifferent flesh, was glad of the reprieve._

_Potter was a little distant, possibly a little drugged, but Snape was bound to treat him with reverence and respect. It was hardly a chore._

_He valued each touch as he bathed Harry far more than any sexual act._

_“You’re lovely,” Snape murmured, one evening, as he bathed Potter in white water under a pink sunset. Potter smiled sleepily, and clung to Snape’s neck._

_Snape’s white shirt was wet and the ends of his hair damp, but he held Harry tenderly as the boy leaned into him._

_“So lovely. Out of all the places I have been, I could stay here. If only I could now, but I have a job to do. Perhaps, after it is all over, I can come back? If not him, then you. Please, if not him, then you.”_

 

~

 

“Look,” Snape hisses, frustrated beyond all reason, “I shall tell you, and only you, this once, and once only. You are not to repeat it to anyone, ever, am I clear?”

Potter nods, dumbly, and Snape tell him the truth.

A truth he has never confessed to anybody.

“They are not… fantasies. There is a branch of Time Theory that presupposes that there are, in fact, many different Realities existing at the same moment. Many different versions of ourselves, in all different combinations of scenarios and of… love interests. They are correct. These potions in court are the results of years of experimentation to find realities in which I might not end up in the miserable and lonely predicament I now find myself in; that I might have what I want most. These are the ones I was successful in finding where you and I have a… sexual connection. Drinking the potion has the power to transport me into their reality, possibly for good, replacing the version of myself that I find there. But, as you see, clearly none of them were to my liking, as I returned, and remained, here.”

Potter’s mouth works, silently. He can see the boy trying to understand.

“You must think I’m stupid,” Potter finally chokes out.

“You can see what I think of you,” Snape snarls. “You will see in court, every day, what I think of you -”

“I hear about you wanting to fuck your little sex slave, that’s what I hear!” Potter yells. “You created some escapist dreams to feed your perverse need for -”

“For what? If I am so perverse, why didn’t I just have you? I had ample opportunity, all those detentions we spent alone together over the years -”

“You’re sick!”

“I finally found a few realities out of the thousands I searched through, out of the ocean of time I travelled, where you and I were together! Yes, they were not what I would have hoped for. Yes, I was disappointed, but yes, I did visit them, and I did fuck you in them!”

Potter stands, chest heaving.

“Why would you do that?” he shouts.

 

~

_One of Snape’s darkest nights came when, upon returning from the Forest of Dean, he found he had stayed away too long._

_He returned to a stench so foul and bitter; it tasted of desecration, of dreams gone sour._

_He tore through Dumbledore’s old rooms (his now, but he felt no ownership; he was a cuckoo invading the nest) and burst into the bedroom._

_Smoke was billowing out of the cauldron - black smoke, fetid smoke._

_The sanctuary potion had spoiled._

_Despair bubbled up in Snape’s throat and vomited out of his mouth as his stomach lurched. He could barely cry out, barely move. All that work to find something he could escape to – failed._

_He would have to begin again._

 

~

 

“Because I care for you, you obnoxious brat!” Snape screams at him, rising also.

Potter falters.

“You… you do?”

Snape turns away.

“I… had no idea,” Potter says, after a long silence.

“No,” Snape chuckles darkly, “you wouldn’t have. What those phials contain are abortive attempts at finding some Reality in which we might have a meaningful connection, but unfortunately I ran out of time.”

“So they’re like doorways to other Worlds?”

“Yes.”

“Worlds where we screw each other.” Potter looks disbelieving.

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t you take one of them, though? Over this reality, in which we don’t?”

“Because I don’t want you in those ways. I don’t want you as my slave.”

“How do you want me? In… in your real fantasies?”

Snape is silent for a long time.

“I… reality is a lot more… mundane,” he mutters, embarrassed. “We share a home, drink coffee in bed on weekends, fight sometimes. Make love. It, perhaps, is the most unrealistic fantasy of them all,” he adds, bitterly.

“You couldn’t find a reality to escape to in which we really did all of that?” Potter looks sceptical.

“As I said, I ran out of time. But who knows, it probably does not exist anyway. And I will never know, now.”

Potter is silent now. Snape can almost hear his little mind working.

“I’ll testify for you,” Potter says, determination etched into his face.

“No, you won’t,” Snape sighs.

“Why not?” Potter snaps.

“Because if you, having seen my ‘fantasies’, still want to help me, people will talk. About us.”

“Let them!”

“No.”

“Snape, it’s hardly going to ruin my perfect life! I’m in the papers every day, there’s on-the-run Death Eaters who want my blood, gangs of people who think Voldemort was doing a grand job! I’m not allowed out apart from under supervision; training for Auror Academy is too dangerous, going back to school endangers the other students. Professor McGonagall practically told me to piss off, that I was too much of a liability to everyone else!” Potter cries.

“It will pass.”

“It hasn’t yet! But if you’re so worried about people accusing us of… whatever… then tell them those aren’t real fantasies!”

“What part of ‘tell no-one, ever’ did your little brain not understand?” Snape sneers.

“It’d show people you weren’t a completely sick pervert, for a start!” Potter sneers back.

“Meddling with Time Theory is about as dark as it gets,” Snape snaps. “If I’m not Kissed for Dumbledore’s murder, I’ll sure as hell be Kissed for that!”

“But you did it out of desperation, out of loneliness, out of… You’re in love with me,” Potter exclaims, suddenly.

“Don’t get on your high horse, there’s no painting me out to be a romantic victim,” Snape sneers. “What my reasons were doesn’t negate the fact that I took the potions and engaged in numerous sexual acts with you, or someone very like you, to assuage said desperate loneliness!”

“Are you in love with me?” Potter persists, sidestepping Snape’s very deliberate attempt at a distraction.

Snape sighs, and the sigh is bone-deep. He feels a thousand years old.

He closes his eyes.

“More than my life,” he says helplessly, and hears Potter choke.

“Wow… Would you ever have told me?”

“Never in a hundred years,” Snape chuckles, darkly.

“This must be, like, the ultimate embarrassment, that it came out this way?”

“You have no idea,” Snape snorts.

“I… it’s just… I have no idea what to make of you, now. You don’t ever show me anything consistent – first you’re a bastard, then you’re a hero, then you’re a pervert, then you’re in love with me... I mean, perhaps I’m seeing many sides of the same person, I don’t know.”

“In a few weeks, I’ll be dead, then the dilemma will be over,” Snape rolls his eyes.

“You can’t want that. Please, let me testify for you.”

“No. There is nothing remaining for me here.”

“Not even me?”

“You are not on offer. You will fall in love, get married, have children… It would kill me to see it. I will not torture myself for the rest of my life.”

“You might get released, move away, and forget me! Things can’t always be this bleak -”

Snape rises.

“If that is all, Mr Potter…”

“Wait! God, I… I live to thank you, don’t you understand? We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“Going to reward me with your nubile young body, are you?” Snape sneers.

To his disquiet, Potter blushes a deep scarlet, and squirms a little in his seat.

“I… everyone makes out like the thought is so horrible…”

An alarm blasts through the room.

Snape turns. The door is already opening.

He turns away, with regret.

“This will be, perhaps, the last time we shall speak.”

“No!” Harry moans, scrambling up.

“I would appreciate it if you would not come to the rest of the trial,” Snape says, turning away at the sight of Potter’s lovely face twisted in misery.

Potter approaches his back.

“Why?”

“And if you would drop your request to see the contents of those phials.”

“No! You can’t make me stay away from you, not now!”

“It would give a dying man a bit of peace, can’t you understand?” Snape grits out.

“You’re not dying, and I’m not leaving you – I said I’d testify and I will!”

“So fucking stubborn!” Snape snarls, whirling about. “Why can’t you leave me be?”

“Because we’re not done!” Potter cries, tearing around the table, thin chest puffing out and green eyes glinting.

He storms right up to Snape and pounds one fist on Snape’s chest, above his heart, as though trying to restart it.

“There’s something… here, between us… I need to understand -”

“That is the last thing you need!” Snape shouts. Potter is too close, the heat radiating from his little body too intense. “I will burn you, and break you, and use you! I have searched for years, and found no reality in which you and I join as equals! It never works! It can never work!”

“Maybe! But you love me. You love me!” Potter moans, wonder bubbling up in his voice now.

He leans his young, upturned face against Snape’s shoulder. Slim hands ball into fists against Snape’s chest.

Snape closes his eyes.

His nose is in Potter’s hair. Potter’s scent is like freshly cut grass, or a forest on a summer’s evening. Snape’s withered heart sighs in his chest. His blood feels hot again, pulsing in his dry veins.

“Stop touching me,” he growls, voice very deep. “I beg you.”

Potter looks up. Pressed against him, emotional and vulnerable and needy; eyes huge –

Snape steps back. It feels like tearing himself in half.

Potter sways a little, his support suddenly gone.

Snape’s every fibre aches to go to him again.

“I think, before they add another criminal charge to my list -”

To his shock, Potter seizes his bound hands and presses his mouth to Snape’s fist.

 

~

 

“Is he testifying for you?” Walter asks, when he returns.

It is the first thing he says. The only thing he cares about.

Snape, however, has his mind elsewhere.

“No.”

 

~

 

Snape lies in the dark cell that night, and looks up to where the ceiling might be, far overhead.

His mind is fogged with care-worn daydreams. Over stimulated by the mere press of Potter’s mouth on his wrist, he feels weak, watery.

He chuckles gloomily to himself; more overcome by the Love he idolises licking his wrist than by the numerous sexual encounters he has participated in.

He remembers their first time. Well, not really their first time.

His first time with a Harry Potter.

He laughs again, bleakly, at the thought of himself at the time, just before Potter started his sixth year: starved for affection; for touch and for closeness in his bitter, bleak existence.

The first time he succeeded in calling forth a reality in which Potter did not flinch at his touch, Snape remembers himself to have been so overwhelmed with relief that he considered not coming back.

He had been visiting other ‘fantasy’ realms in the year previous, although he does not remember exactly when he had realised that he and Potter would never be in his lifetime, and become unable to stand the painful reality of it. The potions experimentation had begun then; a long, lonely road.

The scenarios he found were never too far removed from this reality (straying far from the path was dangerous, and unpredictable) and the characters are usually the same. He has met endless Weasleys and Grangers, and been at Hogwarts over and over. He has even been the same age as Potter.

He has seen Lily Evans precisely forty eight times.

But never has he got to… touch Harry Potter before.

He has been Potter’s enemy, Potter’s friend, even Potter’s best man… But never the lover. Until now.

Their first time comes just after the real Potter’s sixteenth birthday. The lead up to it is not pretty.

In the reality Snape tries out, he thinks the young man is older, but not by much.

 It starts with – or at least, Snape at the time had thought so – the most painful humiliation possible. (When he looks back on it now, he almost laughs. To think, he had been convinced the revelation of his interest in Potter could be no worse than this!)

Snape remembers it with bitterness.

 

~

_When he found his feet, he was standing behind Harry Potter, who was just about to push open to door to a room Snape had never seen before._

_Never seen, and yet… he feared it, instantly._

_To be more specific… He feared Potter’s presence there._

_Feelings from his old life and this new reality warred within him._

_Unfortunately, it took him too long to have any cemented memories from the new reality – Potter had already opened the door._

_It was too late._

_“What… is this place?” Harry whispered. Gazing around, eyes huge._

_Snape, standing in the doorway, slumped against the doorframe and placed a weary hand over his eyes. He remembered._

_“Come out,” he said, low._

_“It that… me?” Harry asked, voice breathy._

_He stepped forward, shakily._

_A candle burned low on a little table, and by the flickering orange light Snape could see…_

_Lining the walls of the tiny room were a riot of pictures; clippings, photographs, drawings… all of Harry Potter, and all of him… naked._

_Harry didn’t seem to have his shirt on in a single one. In some, he was completely starkers, and bent over in all manner of positions; spread out on fur sheets, leaning over suggestively, on his knees; on his hands and knees…_

_“This… I’ve never posed for these,” Harry spluttered._

_“Of course you haven’t,” Snape spat, memories flooding to him of himself in this life, sexually obsessed – worse than himself in his previous life. “Do you know how great the market is for erotic pictures of you? Polyjuice works just as well.”_

_“Did you Polyjuice someone?” Harry squeaked, gazing in horror at a photo of himself, grinning, with a large black dildo up his bottom._

_“No,” Snape growled. “I bought all these,” he lied. It was disturbing, knowing that the body he now inhabited had had sex with whores Polyjuiced as Potter. “Potter, what are you -”_

_Harry had opened one of the drawers. The forbidding objects he found in there made him recoil in shock._

_“Why do you need all those, then?” he squeaked.  “Are you going to use them on me?” he demanded, backing away as Snape moved forward._

_Snape strode over and slammed the drawer shut._

_“Of course not!” he hissed._

_(What would the Snape of this reality have done now, he wondered? Would he have forced Potter against his will? Perhaps Snape had entered this reality in time to stop a terrible tragedy…)_

_“Then why…”_

_“A man can have a fantasy without being a pervert!” Snape snapped, although he didn’t feel like he believed it. This Snape probably was a pervert._

_“You want to do all these things to me,” Harry said, flatly._

_Snape turned away. It was true, but not like this._

_“You want,” Harry began, slowly, “to stick these things up my various –”_

_“Shut up,” Snape growled, his back to Harry, fists clenched._

_“Well do you?” Harry shouted, his voice sounding very loud in the little space. “How could you – this is so bloody disturbing! All the time you pretend to be my mentor, and secretly you’re keeping this! It’s… you know I can’t…”_

_“I know,” Snape said, quietly. “I offer no… explanation.”_

_Harry shook his head._

_“Then why… How come you keep all this… Is that a ball gag?” He squinted at the picture._

_“Probably,” Snape said, not turning around._

_“I think you need to explain,” Harry whispered._

_“Outside,” Snape snapped, and he marched to the door, jerking it open harshly. Harry walked slowly after him, trying not to look about, but his eye fell on a half empty bottle of lube on a shelf, and he shivered._

_Snape closed the door with an air of finality and leant his back against it, looking at Harry searchingly._

_It was only then that he noticed that Harry wore Slytherin robes._

_Clearly different in this reality, then._

_He could no longer rely on the innate Gryffindor nature of the young man._

_A Slytherin Harry Potter… Snape suddenly felt out of his depth. This Potter was an unknown._

_With the door closed and the strange, other-worldly place shut away again, Harry sagged against the table._

_“Go on,” he said, looking exhausted._

_“Tea first,” Snape said, and strode away._

_As he made the tea, he realised how exposed the little kitchen was. From the doorway, Potter could see Snape’s hands shaking as he poured the hot water._

_When Snape handed him his mug, Harry took it silently and wandered, listless, into the living room._

_“Right,” Potter said. “Explain.”_

_Snape looked at him again; a hard, searing look._

_Hell, what did he have to lose? Might be worth playing along… He had never had his sexual interest in Potter exposed before. Perhaps something would come of it…_

_“I do want you,” Snape admitted, low. “I can hardly deny it, now. The question is… what are you going to do now?”_

_“Me?” Potter squeaked. “How do you mean?”_

_“You have knowledge over me – power. You can have me fired.”_

_“I could,” Potter said, thoughtfully, but he still looked too dazed to focus. “I could do. I could run to Dumbledore. Or I could blackmail you.”_

_His Harry would never… But this was not his Harry. This was no Gryffindor._

_“Or… or you could get the box of dildos out and we could… play.”_

_“I… I beg your pardon?” Snape spluttered._

_Potter blushed._

_“I’m going to be honest, I am probably going to blackmail you. But I’ll also have sex with you, because the more I do that, the more I have to hold over you. You have to decide whether having sex with me is worth it.”_

_Definitely no Gryffindor._

_“I get blackmailed either way, I take it?” Snape smirked. “Only worse if I fuck you?”_

_“Yeah,” Harry shrugged, smirking. “But you get to fuck me. Is it worth the risk, the increased aggravation?”_

_“Yes,” Snape said, instantly. He, fortunately, could leave this reality at any time. And he was overwhelmed by the offer of sex – one he had never had before._

_The Snape here deserves whatever comes to him anyway, he thought nastily._

_“Ok then,” Potter grinned. “Go and get the dildos and then… it’s up to you.”_

_Snape started towards the door eagerly, then faltered. This was not… how he envisioned their first time. Surely he would be a fool to turn down an offer of sex, after so much searching?_

_But an offer of sex purely for blackmail’s sake? Did that… count?_

_It was hardly the romantic ideal Snape had so longed for._

_He would take what he could get._

_~_

_Looking back on it now, it was so empty._

_At the time, however, it was heaven, it was bliss; Merlin he could stay here forever, fucking Potter, doing whatever whim Potter thought up just so long as he got to bury himself in that blissful heat over and over… There was lube everywhere – he had been inside Potter all night, had Potter standing, kneeling, on all fours._

_Four slick dildos lay discarded on the rug around them; Potter’s hole stretched and cherry red. Potter looked exhausted, hair sweaty and stuck up in all directions. Snape was currently photographing the boy, who was lying on his back, young arse stuffed full of hard black dildo. Potter spread his legs and grinned._

_“Like that, old man?” he grinned, ankles in the air._

_“Love it,” Snape snarled._

_“Fuck me again?” Potter whimpered, pleadingly._

_Snape dropped the camera and crawled, naked, toward him. Potter pushed out the dildo and threw it aside, and Snape mounted him instantly, the boy on his back still._

_“Come on baby, fuck me hard!” Potter squealed. Snape pumped his hips into him, gasping and growling into Potter’s neck._

_It was bliss; inside Potter was bliss._

_Snape had finally found it._

_“Right. I want money,” Potter said, sometime later, as Snape pulled out and started wiping himself off._

_Snape’s mood soured a little. He was still optimistic at this point, however. He had succeeded in a big goal – they had had sex._

_He and a Harry Potter had had sex. His whole body sang with it._

_He could improve on this for next time – perhaps in a reality in which Potter was not Slytherin, for a start, or so manipulative._

_Oh, but if only he could have the Potter of his reality – pure of heart, good and lovely._

_None he ever met came close, especially not this one._

_But this one had had sex with him._

_He would keep trying. He would find somewhere that would combine the two: lovely Potter, his beacon of hope and beauty… and a sexual relationship._

_Surely he could find just one reality in which the sex was respectful and loving and equal? In which Potter was near enough how he was when Snape loved him best?_

_He only needed one._

 

~

 

Snape, half asleep, twists in his sheet, sweating.

Sickening, this disease – why did he have to fall for Potter at all? Perhaps he ought to have sought out worlds in which Harry Potter never even existed?

He should have known that an obsession this dark, with something he would never – and should never – possess, would only lead to disaster. And it has.

To think of himself back then, when he started, so sure he would find a reality in which himself and Potter had loving, fulfilling sex!

What a fool.

No such reality existed.

But then… why on earth did Potter kiss his bound hands today?

 

~

 

Suddenly, the door clangs; creaks open. Snape tries to sit up but he is tired, so tired.

When he realises it is Harry Potter standing in the doorway, it only makes things worse.

Potter merely stands there, watching Snape cautiously. He stays for so long that Snape comes to wonder whether the boy is a vision.

Potter shifts from foot to foot. When he speaks, his speech sounds painfully unsure; rehearsed, even.

“I’ve never felt so powerless, so useless. I can’t bear the thought of, after all you went through, you not having the outcome you wanted…”

Without further ado, Potter opens his palm.

A phial is nestled there, glinting darkly in the cell’s dim light.

“I don’t know which one it is. It’s one of the five, we stole it. All of them take you to some reality where you… get what you need, don’t they?”

Snape’s mouth has gone dry. He cannot speak.

He chokes, his tongue too thick.

Potter approaches him.

“Will this help? You’re not… saying anything?” Potter whispers.

Snape looks up at him.

“None of them were as beautiful as you,” he croaks out.

What is a little more humiliation now?

Potter draws back; but from shock, not disgust.

He stares down at Snape in fascination, as though seeing him for the first time. His other hand slips across his mouth.

“You’re not going to take it?”

Snape shakes his head, wearily.

“You won’t go?” Harry hisses.

“My worst fear has happened: you know of my… weakness. No Kiss can be worse.”

“I’m giving you an out – an escape – one to where you get what you want!”

“And I am saying thank you, but I will take my chances here.”

“What if you get Kissed? Snape, it’s looking more likely by the day.”

Snape shrugs.

“None of them were you. Would you settle for a cheap imitation of the person you loved? What is the point? I could be with a hundred people who wear your face, but they are not you. Therefore… no. Thank you for your concern.”

Potter pockets the phial, frustration resonating from him in waves.

“You can’t have what you want, so you’ll have nothing?”

“Correct.”

“Snape, I… There’s something I… God! Why is everything always so difficult?”

“How is any of this your concern?”

“Because you want me and I… The idea isn’t totally… I would…”

Potter falters.

“If you don’t take this, you’ll die. I don’t know what to do. I only know I can’t lose you. Please.”

Snape shakes his head.

Potter’s eyes grow hard.

“I’ll be in court tomorrow, and every day, until the sentencing. I’m not giving up on you.”

He rises, and stalks out.

 

~

 

“…and so, without further ado, and after all the perversions we have seen in these last six weeks, it is with little regret that I sentence you to be Kissed!”

Snape raises his head as the judge speaks, so that, by the word ‘kissed’, his gaze has locked with Potter’s.

The boy looks gratifyingly stricken. Perhaps this will be the last time he ever sees Potter.

Despite the hubbub that breaks out around him, Snape thinks only of Potter’s face; of trying to commit to memory that precise curve of his jaw; the almond shape of his eyes. He drinks in that last look as one parched, drawing in sustenance for his final hours.

A cocoon against the world, the loveliness of Potter’s mouth.

 

~

 

As the night wears thin, Snape’s mood sours still further. Bleakness enfolds him.

At around two, there are footsteps outside. Snape, ragged, entangled in despair as black as treacle, can barely raise his head.

“Snape? Se…Snape?”

That voice…

The cell door groans open, and Potter glides in, a pale light in the darkness. Too thin still, and haunted-looking.

“Snape, look at me.”

Snape regards him wearily.

“I know I’m not particularly creative, but one of your scenarios got me thinking. Vampires can’t be Kissed. It has no effect. Listen, please, there isn’t much time!”

From the depths of his robes, Potter pulls out… nothing. Then he mutters an incantation over it, and into being dissolves a small leather pouch.

Kneeling beside him, Potter lays the pouch on the dirty ground and gently shakes out the contents.

Snape, expecting to see more illegally obtained phials of his potions, turns away, sickened. It all seems especially sordid now, with the object of his perverse desires kneeling in front of him.

A hand upon his cheek; soft and tender.

A touch worth dying for.

Snape closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, Potter is kneeling between his parted legs, much too close.

He risks a look at the ground, and there is a phial, but it contains a red liquid, not black, and sits beside a small, clean knife.

Confused, he looks up, and realises Potter’s face is inches from his own.

Snape, aware he has not washed in days, wants to shrink away into the stone wall at his back. But Potter is looking at him in fascination, as though he were a specimen in a jar – now Potter edges closer, all curiosity and hope and he’s far too near…

He smells beautiful, lemongrass and ginger and something else, a raw tang of sweetness, like fruit, oh, so much moist skin…

For all the times he has kissed Harry Potter, when he finally kisses the one that he wants, he realises all those kisses were nothing.

He has never kissed Harry Potter before.

Potter kisses sweetly, tentatively. Edging close to him, he takes Snape’s stubbled jaw in his hands. Ever so light; a touch almost imperceptible. Potter touches his soft lips to Snape’s dry ones with the hesitancy of youth. Snape, terrified, unused to being the one to be kissed, sits motionless as Potter experiments by fluttering his mouth against Snape’s. Until, emboldened, there is a more definite press of lips and a small, pink tongue tracing over his bottom lip –

Snape crushes Harry to his chest and sinks his tongue into the boy’s mouth. Harry feels smaller than he had imagined; there’s less meat to him, a small bag of eager bones and sinews in Snape’s hands. He cannot pour out all the despair, all the pain and desire and love into one kiss, so he winds Harry in his arms, all the tighter for it being of no use.

Too late, he has what he wants (needs) so badly.

They kiss for a long time in the dark. Potter makes little sniffling noises and sighs into Snape’s hair when his neck is nuzzled. When Snape bites down softly on the juncture between neck and shoulder, Harry makes a high-pitched moan and scrabbles at his shoulder.

He thinks about confessing love. He has not actually said the words to Potter yet. It might be his only chance.

He draws back, and tries to read Harry’s face in the sparse dregs of light. He feels the smaller body breathing, and imagines for a moment, a lifetime of this, this bliss.

“You are my… greatest regret,” he says, instead.

He feels Harry’s head lift up.

“You’re mine, too.”

Snape snorts.

“Me saying that is far more – what have you to regret, for God’s sake?”

“That I didn’t understand what you were doing before – before I got your memories. You played a part and I ought to have seen through it -”

“That would have defeated the point rather, no?”

“Please! You’re the most important person in my life. I don’t know what that means yet, but I’m willing to, if you don’t just give up on yourself. The red phial is Vampire blood. It’ll turn you.”

“You’re asking me to die, and live as a fugitive. How do you think we’ll have a chance to find out anything?” Snape sneers.

He wants to believe, to have hope, but his heart is so tired. Perhaps it might beat better dead, after all?

“I don’t know,” Harry whispers, and his voice is so small, he almost sounds defeated too. “Please don’t give up on… on...”

“New Vampires are notoriously weak – are you expecting me to survive the Kiss tomorrow and then fend off the Aurors who will want to lock me up for -”

“I’ll be there tomorrow too, we all will. Ron and Hermione. We’ll work it out.”

Snape’s lips twitch in a wry smile.

“Hadn’t thought that far ahead?”

“Does that surprise you?” Harry whispers, sliding his hands up Snape’s chest. He glances at the door. “If you’re doing this, I want it to be while I’m here, so we’d better hurry.”

“No time for me to enjoy my last breath, or my last sunset -” Snape snorts.

“It’s already dark.”

“You know what I mean!” he snaps. “And how exactly am I to -”

Potter shuffles back (Snape finds his hands suddenly empty, like his heart has been torn out) and starts feeling about on the floor behind him.

“I brought… there’s a knife here, somewhere. Just a small one. And a phial of the blood.”

“Where on earth did the Boy Saviour get that?”

“Don’t ask. With the security detail I’ve been assigned, what with all the death threats… I can’t stay long.”

“Then you should have brought alcohol or something, makes the blood thinner.”

“Fuck!”

“Plus being drunk might have been a nice thought,” Snape snorts, bitterly.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never…”

“Hand me the knife, if you’re going to talk, then,” Snape interrupts.

“I… You’re sure about doing this?”

“As you so tactfully point out, I’m going to die in the morning anyway. Why? Cold feet?”

Small fingers firmly press a pocket knife into his hand.

“No. And I want to be here.”

“Have you found the vampire blood?”

“It’s here in my hand,” Potter whispers.

“Alright then.”

There is a silence. Snape grits his teeth.

“How sexually experienced are you?”

“Eh?” Potter splutters.

“I don’t want details, just the basics. Have you been with a woman?”

“God! Er… in what way?” He can almost hear Potter blushing.

“Sex. Have you had sex?” Snape grits out.

There is a pause.

“No.” A bashful admission.

“What have you done?”

“Um… Handjobs. A couple, a… A couple of times.”

“More than one person?”

“No.”

“Oral sex?”

“No!” Potter squirms.

“Not at all?” Snape demands.

“I said no!”

“What about men?”

“Men? Not a thing. I never even kissed a man before today.”

“Never been drunk, ah… never had sex…”

“I know, I know. Too experienced in some ways, woefully innocent in others – mainly in the good things, from what I can gather. Sucks to be me, right? Snape?”

Harry scrabbles around in the rapidly growing warm pool, and Snape knows the moment when the boy realises, for he hears a low moan.

He can taste the boy’s panic. For his own part, he is blissfully lightheaded, even withstanding the throbbing pain in his right thigh.

“How does it come out so fast?” Harry is moaning and babbling. Their fingers are wet when Snape finally locates, and links his fingers with, Harry’s free hand.

“When I stop breathing, tip the blood down my throat. Don’t leave it too long. Then get the fuck out of here.”

Potter is strangely silent.

 

~

 

The transformation is not pretty.

“I thought I said leave!” Snape gasps, as he writhes and thrashes, feeling his dying body rage against movement without blood, without oxygen.

Potter, however, kneeling before him, eyes luminous, merely bites his lip and edges closer.

“You’re weak! Bite me!” Potter whispers.

“I haven’t got any fucking fangs yet!” Snape groans.

“Oh, God – where’s the knife?” Potter starts blundering about in the darkness.

“What are you doing?”

There is a silence – then, a soft gasp.

“Ow, shite… Um… Quick, it’s getting everywhere…” Potter’s voice sounds scared and small now.

Snape reaches out – to help him, to stop the bleeding – but suddenly Potter is leaning against him, bodily, and Snape’s treacherous hands seize up handfuls of him.

Their mouths meet, and soon after Potter’s damp wrist is in his mouth, and he sucks at it in fear; in wonder. Gulping down Potter’s warm blood.

Potter stays with him until just before dawn, murmuring soft things against his throat as his skin grows cold and his body dies, readjusts… and restarts.

 

~

 

The watery dawn light is sore on his raw skin. As he looks out of the barred window with his dead eyes, Snape thinks bitterly that he is was glad his execution is not at midday.

 

~

 

Executions at Azkaban are performed on a platform, overlooking the roaring sea below. There are no guard railings, and no wards. People can easily take a running jump, rather than face the Kiss.

From all accounts, several do.

At the sight of the Dementor that has been assigned the task of leeching his soul out of his living flesh, Snape feels nothing. No foreboding, nothing. He has been cold ever since last night, when the last traces of his body’s warmth spilled out across his cell floor.

The platform is lined with people; Snape is flanked on both sides as he walks toward the bleakly floating executioner. He tries not to look to left and right, yet still he sees Potter, clear as day.

Perhaps it is his new Vampire senses, but each solemn form on the platform seems washed with grey, pale as the dawn. But not Potter.

(Potter, gorgeous, anxious, resolved; the boy blazes like the dying autumn sun. Snape feels it to his core, the burn of him; the beauty.)

As he reaches the Dementor, Snape is unsettled by the fact that the hopeless feeling he had long associated with their kind is… missing.

He looks up into the faceless face of his executioner.

And bares his new fangs.

 

~

 

Watching a Dementor try and fail to suck out a soul is like watching a trapped spider in a jar; grotesque, the way it starts thrashing and writhing. There are gasps from the assembled crowd as the creature tries to tear at Snape in any way it can. Snape stands firm and straight, eyes closed, as wizards around him start to mutter their dissent.

Snape opens his eyes then, and watches in amusement as the Dementor, clearly unmanned by its failure, shrinks back. Wringing its dead hands in horror at itself.

He turns, amused by the muttering behind him – expecting some remonstration or intervention from Potter’s camp.

Potter, however, has gone. No-one comes forward to Snape’s aid.

The officials from the Wizengamot are bunching together now.

Someone in the crowd starts the mutter of ‘Cast Avada Kedavra!’ Another cries, ‘Finish him!’

Snape wants to laugh. Then, in a moment of cocksure self-assurance, having cheated death once again – having become death – he bares his fangs for the crowd too.

Then instantly regrets it, as fifty wands all train on him within five seconds.

 

~

 

Snape stands tensed, fangs slipping in mortification behind his thin lips. He glances about – surely Potter, having been so obvious earlier – ought to be easy to find; to gesture forward for aid?

Snape can feel his presence on the platform, in the way it made his skin sing and his dead blood tremble - but he cannot not see him.

Suddenly, from the back of the crowd somewhere, there is a scream.

“Harry, no! No, let him go, let him – HARRY!”

 

~

 

They bundle Snape down the stone stairs and into a holding cell so fast his head spins.

Gone.

Taken.

“Did you organise this, Snape?” Weasley screams into his face.

Snape, pale and sweaty, shakes his head over and over, denial after denial.

“Do you know where Harry Potter is?”

“No!”

“Do you know who took him?”

“No!”

 

~

 

Hours pass. Wasted, useless hours.

“I can find him for you. I have had his blood,” Snape finally says.

That shuts them all up.

“How? Jesus, do I even want to know?” Weasley groans. “Kingsley – if it’s true, can’t he help?”

 “I can hardly find him for you if I am incarcerated – or deceased – can I?” Snape sneers.

There is a collective pause.

“Have you planned this, between you?” Shacklebolt hisses. “Is this part of your brilliant plan?”

“No, the Vampirism was his brilliant plan. Potter added getting kidnapped all on his own – how would that help me?”

“So you genuinely have no idea where he is?” Granger slumps down into a chair, clearly devastated.

“There will be, if I am ever allowed out of the wards that smother this place, a trail I can attempt to follow, through his blood. I have read about it. I can attempt to find him, but not from within a cell. And, before it is suggested, I won’t take kindly to being followed.”

“What do you want?” Weasley folds his arms.

“Just because you got accepted into Auror Academy on the merits of your more popular, more talented and more attractive best friend does not make you a master interrogator, Weasley,” Snape snaps.

“Tell me what you want, then?” Shacklebolt snaps back, rising angrily.

“Guarantee my freedom, permanently. Drop the charges. And I will return him to you.”

“What guarantee do we have that you won’t just run off?” Granger cries.

Snape fixes her with his dead black eyes.

“I have wanted him since he was fourteen, have just been tried for obsessing sexually over him, and have drunk his blood – which, under Vampire bonding rites, makes him my property. I would go to him if my spine were snapped. Now let me go, Shacklebolt. We’re wasting valuable time.”

“Alright - terms. You check in on Friday with us, tell us where you are, if you haven’t found him by then. If he is returned alive, you may be able to buy back your freedom. If you don’t find him… We will find you. Is that clear, Snape?”

“Crystal.”

“Good. Now fuck off.”

 

~

 

_Three months later..._

 

On a slender table, a turn-dial white telephone starts to ring shrilly.

Five minutes later, it is still ringing.

Surrounding it, three Malfoys regard both each other and the phone with increasing anxiety.

“You answer it,” Lucius prods his son with the head of his cane, before returning to leaning upon it far more heavily than he used to.

Swallowing thickly, Draco reaches for the phone.

“Wait! That old thing has never rung in how many years?” Narcissa grasps Draco’s arm.

Draco sighs, shrugs her off gently, and picks up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Malfoy. It’s Snape.”

“Professor? Dad, it’s Snape,” Draco breathes.

“I am not a Professor. Draco, I need to speak to Malfoy senior.”

 

~

 

There is a fumbling and a few muttered voices.

“Severus? I heard you died,” Malfoy’s smirk is audible.

“I did. I need money, Malfoy,” Snape glances about. This telephone box has had all its windows smashed. There is no privacy to be had.

“Again? How much?” Malfoy sounds amused.

“A mere trifle. Nine hundred thousand.”

There was the sound of choking.

“I hope you don’t think me rude, Severus, but… What are you intending to buy?”

“Something highly valuable,” Snape hisses.

“What is it?”

“It’s personal, Malfoy.”

“Potter, then. I thought so. You are aware that the Malfoy estate isn’t worth as much as it used to be?”

“I need it by tomorrow night. Sell the peacocks,” Snape snorts.

“What’s in it for me, Snape?”

“Name your terms,” Snape grits out. He has been expecting this.

“Make me one of those potions you’re now so infamous for.”

“Lucius!”

“Not now, Narcissa!”

“You asked me for a sex fantasy potion in front of your wife?” Snape snorts, amused.

“Will you do it? I don’t have much in this life any more, Snape,” Lucius hisses.

“Yes. Put Draco back on.”

A fumbling again.

“I swear I am seriously traumatised now.” Draco’s voice.

“Draco, can you facilitate this if I give you my location? You must not reveal this to anyone.”

“You’re buying Potter? Who’s selling him?”

“The people who kidnapped him. Draco, I can’t say more.”

“I followed the trial. You and Potter. It’s sick. And the worst part of it is, I’m more pissed off that it wasn’t me.”

“Draco!”

“Mum, it’s fine. Snape, tell me exactly there you are.”

 

~

 

The market square is thick with coloured smokes (purples, oranges, violent greens) and the smell of fetid meats. Perfumed and hazy, the gloom shrouds Snape, a dank cloak of smells, as he moves through the dusty stone streets.

Hungry to the point of starvation, thin and beleaguered, Snape clasps his tattered robe with one hand, and a brown briefcase in the other.

No-one pays him any notice in this dim, drug-addled place; his fangs have refused to retract for five days now, but not one person has screamed, or laughed, or even noticed.

Snape regards the passers-by with disdain; wide-eyed, barely dressed, shepherded by heavies or collapsed in puddles of vomit in the streets. Snape has fed on too many drug addicts in the past few months – their blood is putrid and thick, clotting in his throat; or else too thin like alcohol, stinking like alcohol too.

Dimly, in the back of his mind, he still remembers the gentle beauty of Potter’s blood in his mouth.

Nectar instead of decay.

Snape has lost count of the men he had killed to get this far.

Potter had been sold into a slavery ring, and moved from country to country across Europe. Thither went Snape, following in footsteps weeks old, trails gone cold, or dying. Missed opportunities, false information, and numerous fights – but finally, he is here, in this stinking place, where the pull between him and Potter is stronger than ever.

It beats in Snape’s chest (as if he still had a heart able to beat, in there somewhere).

Potter is here, in this town, somewhere close by.

Snape, squinting in the murky twilight, pauses before a large black door. There is no number, nor sign. He knocks.

“I’m not sure you want to be here?” a man murmurs, directly into his left ear.

Snape turns. Two men loom directly behind him, stocky and tall, out of nowhere. (Have they been following him, unnoticed? He is clearly losing his touch.)

“I am here,” Snape hisses, in practiced words, “to apply for a loan.”

He gestures with the briefcase towards the black door, impatient now.

The two men exchange glances.

“Got an appointment with the bank manager?”

“I have. Seven o’clock.”

Another shared glance. One of the men pushes past Snape roughly, and fits a brass key into a rusted lock. He shoves at the huge door and it creaks open onto a corridor that is dark and airless.

“Enjoy.”

Snape bows his head, and stoops inside, relieved. The corridor slants downwards, taking him underground. At the bottom is a plastic purple bead curtain, which rustles as he pushes through it.

 

~

 

The welcome room is a riot of purple sofas and gold plush cushions. The chandelier creaking from the gold ceiling is missing several broken crystals. The carpet is torn and a deep red, like spilled blood. A woman, covered from head to toe in a lime green robe made of a rippling sheer fabric, approaches him.

“Name?”

“Stoker.”

The name meets with recognition, to his relief. Snape has a flashback to the real Mr Stoker, lying crumpled on his apartment’s toilet floor, congealing, after Snape’s ‘questioning’.

“This way, Mr Stoker. Drink?”

Snape shakes his head.

“You are just in time, you are the last here. Bidding starts in five minutes.”

 

~

 

Snape is shown into a tiny black box of a room, with a glass panel instead of a far wall. There is an executive style leather chair - and a wired panel with buttons, like a remote, sitting on a spindly table beside it.

“Buttons light up, auction starts. Bid by pressing red button. When red button goes out, you are highest bidder. When red button is lit, someone else is highest bidder. Accept purchases by pressing green button. Retire from auction by pressing yellow button. Understand?”

Snape sits, cautiously. He nods. He tucks the briefcase close to his right leg.

 

~

 

“Gentlemen, for your pleasure, we have our first lady tonight. Remember to bid with the red button. Bidding starts at five thousand. Over to you.”

Snape sits in the dark, the button panel lit up next to him.

On the other side of the glass panel, in the centre of a circular room obviously bordered by numerous other booths just like his, a young woman stands in the glare of a single overhead spotlight.

She is wearing a gold bikini, and it looks like someone else has done her make-up – it appears plastered onto her otherwise attractive face, turning it a sour orange.

Snape presses the yellow button. Retire.

 

~

 

An hour passes. Each bidding war takes around ten minutes. A string of young men and women are hustled into the spotlight, scantily clad and shivering under the gaze of the booths surrounding them.

And then, just like that, a young man is pushed into the spotlit circle.

Dangerously thin, hair cropped shorter than Snape has ever seen in, doe-eyed and resentful in the glare of the lights. A shorn lamb.

Beautiful.

Potter quivers, squinting in nervous anticipation into lights that must have been blinding.

Biting his red bottom lip, shuffling his bare feet, clenching and unclenching slender fingers into fists…

Dressed in nothing but a thin flesh-coloured pair of panties, barely there, the slight of him makes Snape’s blood boil.

He grits his teeth, running his tongue over his fangs, which definitely refuse to retract at the sight of Potter. The urge to possess the boy, after so many trials, is almost overwhelming.

For Potter to be so close, yet remain just out of reach…

Snape adjusts his cuffs.

Calm.

He is transfixed by the sight of Potter’s ankles.

On the floor, to his right, in the brown briefcase, nestles the equivalent of nine hundred thousand pounds.

 

~

 

After months of searching, the final event happens very fast.

“Special order – luxury item, this young man. Who will bid first?”

Snape makes no move. The red button taunts him, lit up bright red like a glowing cherry.

Then it starts.

“Starting the bidding at fifty thousand. Begin, gentlemen!”

Behind Potter high up on the wall, a red digital panel records the amount. Flashing up at fifty, it immediately begins to shoot up with alarming speed.

Snape bids once at ninety five thousand, then again at four hundred. He tries not to look at Potter, blind and frightened-looking, wilting in the glare of the spotlights. Potter, who must be completely unaware of Snape’s presence.

He sees Potter tremble at six hundred thousand, eyes downcast. Defeat starts to etch itself into the lines of Potter’s bare body.

What must be going through the young man’s head, Snape has no idea.

He is not a man to fall at the final hurdle.

Nevertheless, when the rising figure starts to slow at eight hundred thousand, Snape feels his dead palms begin to sweat. Not long before he has exhausted his resources.

Surely, he cannot lose now…

The bidders start dropping out. First one, then five more, as if the humiliation of losing is more acceptable in a group.

There are two men left, and Snape.

Eight hundred and fifty thousand.

Snape fixes his eyes on the red button. When the light goes out, he is the highest bidder.

When it is red, he has to bid, or lose.

He bids.

Eight hundred and sixty thousand.

One more man drops out.

Eight hundred and seventy thousand.

Thirty thousand pounds stand between him and Potter.

Eight hundred and eighty thousand.

If he loses, he will have to kill every man in this room.

There is a pause. His adversary does not press the button.

Snape hold his breath. Such as a man can, who no longer needs to breathe.

Eight hundred and ninety thousand.

His last bid. He has no more.

He presses the button.

Nine hundred thousand.

Snape closes his eyes as his light goes out. When he opens them again, he fully expects to see it illuminated red once more…

He had been foolish not to ask for more money. So foolish.

Potter is even more enchanting in the flesh than in his dreams – of course men want him. Now Snape has lost the easy way out; a lot of blood stands between him and his prize. But he is so tired; perhaps he will not make it.

He should try to fight them here; he has more chance of gazing into Potter’s enchanting beautiful green eyes as real death takes him…

He opens his eyes.

His light is still out.

Almost wildly, he glances up.

A hand falls on his shoulder. One of the heavies from outside is standing at his side.

“Bidder retires. You win.”

 

~

 

Snape slumps back in his chair; he is sure he can feel his truly dead heart slamming about inside his chest.

Done.

Harry Potter is finally being delivered to him – rather than moving further and further from his reach.

Mindful of the eyes on him, he collects himself; back ramrod straight, chin up, eyes hard. As though what he has just purchased is a mere commodity and not… his entire purpose for being.

Potter stands there, trembling, with no clue as to who has just won him.

Snape gazes at him; never has he felt so possessive of Potter as he does in that moment.

One of the guards stalks over and seizes Potter by the arm, and Snape growls, low in his throat.

He watches Potter flinch and struggle like a stuck fish, as the young man has his hands bound with blue plastic rope, and is manhandled out of the glare of the lights.

A tap on his shoulder.

“Money first.”

Snape hands over the briefcase in silence.

“Good. While we count, you may meet with boy. When doors open, money is counted: you may leave.”

 

~

 

Snape has a moment to glimpse Potter through the cracked green glass of the red door.

He watches Potter, glasses clearly lost some time ago, feel his way blind around the new room.

Trembling; clearly trying to formulate an escape plan.

 He watches Potter fail to find the door, and sink in despair into one of the green chairs.

“Fuck!” whimpers the young man, head dropping toward his skinny bound wrists. He starts to pick at the rope with bitten fingernails.

Snape, overwhelmed with some emotion that feels like love, even to a man as bitter and lost as him, opens the door.

Potter jumps up, falls over an occasional table and screams.

 Scrambling up, trying to right himself, skinny chest butterflying:

“Don’t you dare touch me, you bastards!” he yowls. “I will hurt you! I have powers!”

Overcome with tenderness, Snape closes the door behind himself, quietly.

“Harry,” he says, softly.

A vase crashes against the wall, off-target. Ineffectual.

“Don’t come near me!”

“Harry,” he says louder. “Calm yourself.”

The small body freezes.

“I… who is there?”

“It’s S-Severus,” Snape whispers, voice breaking. “You’re safe now.”

 

~

 

That night, he tucks Potter into the single bed in his grotty hotel room, but Potter refuses to be left alone. He eats a pack of biscuits as he sits, wrapped in a stained dressing gown, under the battered coverlet.

Considering neither of them are the same as they were only a few months ago, and have never been in a domestic situation together, it feels surprisingly normal. Snape sits in the bathroom, towel drying his hair, a spare white towel wrapped around his narrow waist. He could spell it dry, but he prefers to do it himself.

He dresses quickly, and pads back into the bedroom. Potter sits in a shower of biscuit crumbs.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go out to eat?” Snape asks, softly.

“No. No, I’m good. Maybe for breakfast in the morning?”

Snape nods.

“I’ll give you money.”

“Won’t you come?”

“I can’t, now.”

“Oh.”

There is a silence.

“I forgot,” Potter falters. “How did… being Kissed feel?”

“Honestly?” Snape asks, dryly. “It tickled.”

Potter laughs, wryly. The lovely sound makes Snape smile a little, in spite of himself. Then his smile falls away.

“It was when that was happening that they took you, wasn’t it.”

“I…” Potter looks guilty, all of a sudden. Confused, Snape sits on the edge of the bed.

“Harry?”

“It… God, I was so stupid. The… the plan, ok, was to make it look like I’d been kidnapped, and then they’d do that they did – send you after me. Free you. Vampire with my blood. Great way to find a missing person. I actually had a plan. You thought I didn’t, but I did.”

Snape frowns.

“But the people I… I wanted it to look like I’d been taken, obviously, so I got some people to do a good kidnapping scene – you probably didn’t see it from where you were?”

“No.”

“But… when it came to letting me go – God, I must have looked such a fool. I got up and said, ‘thanks very much guys, I’ll be going now’. They just laughed. I was so desperate, I did it behind everyone’s backs.”

Snape is on his feet in seconds.

“Look, don’t start, alright? I thought it was the best way to help you and -”

“You’re seriously not telling me that you got into this mess – for me? How could you be so stupid?” Snape yells at him.

Potter cowers a little.

“I know,” he whimpers. “I was so desperate. I had that security detail following my every move – I could hardly take a piss without someone wanting to know where I was – and I didn’t have much time. These men… I found them at Remus’ funeral; they said they wanted to help, that they supported you.”

“Of course they did! For all the – I should kill you myself!” Snape cries. “Never in my life have I heard -”

“I love you,” Potter whispers, miserably, and Snape’s anger crumbles around him like the biscuits in Potter’s lap.

Potter sits up a little, brushing away the crumbs and patting down the patchwork coverlet.

“Come sit with me?”

Snape turns. His chest aches a little at the sight of Potter, so small and pale and thin, smiling hopefully up at him from the mess of blankets.

Potter, who has gone through hell to get Snape out of prison.

Drawn as though on a string, he approaches.

Sitting on the edge of Potter’s bed, suddenly awkward, he stares down at his joined hands. The last time he and Potter were this close, his hands were bound then, too.

Now, his own fear holds him captive. Somehow Potter always has the power to make Snape feel as though his hands are dirty; that he would be sullying the boy with their touch.

“Is there anything you’d like?” Potter murmurs, sliding closer. “Please don’t leave me,” Potter adds, “I can’t be without you. I did all this for you, please don’t be angry. I know -”

“I could have lost you,” Snape growls. “Saving my life is not worth what you did. I wish I could be grateful, but I am so angry -”

“If it had all worked, we could have been safe together,” Potter murmurs, edging closer to him. “That was all I wanted. But I fucked it up, as usual.”

“How could you be so reckless on my account?” Snape snarls.

“I… Because of all you did for me – there was only a few days remember, it all happened so fast and I couldn’t just do nothing while they killed you! It would have killed me too! Why don’t… why don’t you give me that bath we were talking about, ages ago?”

Potter coaxes his face around.

 

~

 

It starts almost innocently; Harry trailing Snape into the bathroom and sitting, smiling shyly, as Snape fills the tub.

“When we return to England, I can help you with some of those scars,” Snape was saying, looking through the vanity cupboard and bypassing bottle after bottle of scented lotion. “These will dry your skin out.”

“Severus.”

“I know several dittany infusions that will make a big improvement.”

“Severus.”

“How hot do you want the water? You looked quite chilly earlier… Oh.”

He has turned.

Harry Potter stands before him, naked, shivering like a newborn colt. All long limbs and wide eyes.

Snape’s mouth falls open.

Harry, half hard, tugs at himself hopefully. Then his trembling hands brush over bruises and tender-looking scar tissue, and Snape’s eyes follow them, in spite of himself.

Then, to his horror, he watches Harry curl in on himself a little.

“Is it bad?” Harry whispers, looking mortified now, inching back. “I wasn’t trying to show you something disgusting…”

“No,” Snape murmurs; springing forward, hands out limply, uselessly.

“I guess I can’t help it if I -” Harry hangs his head.

Snape looks at the scars of the last three months patterning the boy’s body and hates himself; hates Harry, curses the boy for being trusting and foolish. Hates him for trying to help Snape, to his own detriment. Fool. He has done this to Harry. He has done this.

“You just wanted to undress. I’m sorry, I… This has been done to you. But it doesn’t… detract. You’re still… everything I dreamed of,” Snape confesses, softly.

“I… I am?” Harry whispers, his eyes filling with tears.

Snape gingerly tries to enfold Harry in his arms, but Harry seems torn between wanting to hide his face and scars and yet still wanting to be held. They bump arms and faces awkwardly until Harry rests his face in Snape’s neck and finally allows Snape to hold him.

“All I want… is to be everything that you need,” Harry mumbles, into Snape’s scarred neck.

“We all have scars,” Snape says, pulling back a little and allowing Harry to see where the young man has his face. Instead of looking embarrassed, Harry leans forward, and presses a kiss to the snarled flesh at Snape’s throat.

“I wondered whether that’d go when you were… turned.”

“No. Accelerated healing is not one of the properties I have inherited.”

“Can you fly?”

“I could fly before.”

“Do you have fangs?”

Snape bares them, nastily.

Harry merely smiles.

“How do you know where to bite people?”

“You don’t. There is no sense of it, either – I had hoped it would be automatic, instinctual. But alas. My first attempts were… hideous,” he smirks.

“It wasn’t a sensual experience, then?” Harry chuckles.

“This is probably the most sensual experience I have ever had, right now,” Snape snorts.

Harry steps out of the circle of Snape’s arms.

“Can I undress you?”

“If it would please you, yes.”

“It would,” Harry murmurs, and leans up to press his lips to Snape’s. “Can you put the fangs away?”

Snape tries.

“They won’t… go,” he growls.

“It’s ok,” Harry says. “We’ll do it around them.”

Still, it is irritating. He wants to press his tongue into Harry’s sweet mouth, but doing so would tear it and fill Harry’s mouth with dead blood. He presses his mouth as carefully as he can onto Harry’s, and the boy clings to him and winds slim arms about his neck and back.

Then there are small fingers at the buttons of his shirt, coaxing it open. Soon, his chest is bared, and Harry is threading his fingertips through the dusting of black hair there; brushing his nipples.

Harry opens his shirt, drawing it back over his shoulders, and kisses the newly revealed skin, licking and sucking. It is so erotic; Snape has never had his body attended to like this, with such attention and gentleness. His shirt flutters to the floor and Harry kneels, kissing his sternum, his ribs, his belly. Unbuckling his belt whilst sucking at his hip bones, then reverently guiding his trousers and underpants down. Helping him to step free.

Harry licks along his cock lovingly, a broad swipe of his tongue. Not mean, not disgusted, but tender. He puts it in his mouth because he wants to. He laps at the slit for more and buries his nose in the wiry hair, breathing it in, moaning happily.

It takes surprisingly little preparation – less than five minutes of Harry shifting about, bent over the bath, with Snape’s fingers up his arse.

Finally, when they are ready, Harry draws him over to the huge bathroom mirror. Leaning over the sink before it, ankles spread, he coaxes Snape to stand behind him. Snape fondling Harry’s bottom, sucking on his spine, follows as though dreaming.

He finds the hole and fidgets his wet cock inside, and Potter taps him gently, reminds him to raise his head. In the mirror, their eyes meet. He fancies he can see into Harry’s soul in that moment, and it blinds him with its light and radiance and love. Potter pushes back slowly, a smile blossoming across his flushed face.

“Oh. Oh, yes. Yes. Severus. You’re inside me, oh God!”

Harry leans his head back lovingly, encouraging Snape to pull his hands around and hold Harry gently by his hips.

“Oh, wow! I can’t believe it!”

Nor can Snape. He trembles as he holds Harry.

As though one rough touch would shatter this perfect dream to pieces.

“We’re together now, we’re going to be together. I love you, I love you. Hold me closer. Oh Severus!”

Harry’s chattering during sex could have been annoying, except that it isn’t. It is a lifeline, reminding Snape that this is not just another empty encounter. This is him and, finally, the body and soul of the young man that he loves. Harry is here, fully present, loving each moment, loving him. It is more than he could ever have wished for.

“My love,” he whispers, into Harry’s ear. Licks the skin.

“Yours,” Harry moans, delighted. “Yours.”

 

~

 

Malfoy Manor looks like a ruin from the outside.

Only one solitary light, burning in an upper window, betrays its inhabitants.

It is Draco who answers the door to them. He looks between Snape and Harry, hands joined, and stands back to let them inside without a word.

“Mum left,” is the first thing he says, and that is only after they are ensconced in front of the fire in the old servant’s parlour.

Snape has the sofa; Potter lies asleep with his head in Snape’s lap. Snape’s fingers tangle in his hair.

It must be gone three; the shadows are cold and haunting. Draco sips tea from a battered mug and fingers his wand, lazily. He does not look at Snape when he speaks.

“What about your father?”

“What about him? Miserable old shite. He’s upstairs. You’ll see him tomorrow. How long are you staying?”

“Until I can determine whether or not I am still a wanted man in this country. Is that alright?”

Draco shrugs.

“They put quite a bounty on your head, or so I heard.”

“Oh.”

So much for the dream of being a free man with his Love, then. But they needed somewhere to go, now that they have returned to Britain. Snape has almost been tempted to stay away – it has been heaven, these past four days, travelling back to England with Harry, in love, together.

 

~

 

Draco is skittish when Snape awakes, that evening.  Looking back on it, he should have known.

He comes up from the cellar to find Harry and Draco sitting in silence in the parlour, in armchairs opposite from each other.

Potter has a bowl of thin soup in his lap and is sipping at it quietly from an ornate silver spoon.

As Draco hands Potter a cup of tea, the boy spills some of it across Potter’s knee.

“Ow!” Potter mumbles, taking the cup.

“Sorry,” Draco mutters, turning away. He looks at Potter strangely as he does so.

Snape joins them, without a word, sitting the threadbare rug at Potter’s feet.

He can feel Draco’s eyes upon him, and looks up.

“There’s a chair there,” Draco spits, motioning to the empty sofa.

Snape lays his head upon Potter’s thigh. He feels the young man startle, tense – then relax. Potter’s fingers pet at his hair gently.

“Fuck that’s weird,” Draco murmurs, shuddering.

“Sorry,” Potter shrugs.

“Have you told your weird little mates about your new boyfriend, then?” Draco adds, pulling a tartan blanket about his shoulders.

“We’ve not told anybody we’re back, save you,” Potter shakes his head.

“An honour, I’m sure,” Draco sneers, as Potter sips his tea thoughtfully.

 

~

 

Later that night, Harry lies in a white ceramic bath, which Snape has made up for him to help with his bruises and scars. The water is a creamy white, salted, and smells like honey. Steam rises from the water as Harry luxuriates in it in silence, eyes closed.

All around him sits a sea of white candles. Snape perches on a chair by the bath, cradling Harry’s thin wrist in his fingers. He watches the young man’s rib cage straining against the skin with each breath.

“What are you waiting for?” Harry opens one eye.

“You still look weak,” Snape murmurs.

Potter has been going through phases. Sometimes he will surprise Snape and demolish a box of biscuits, or a cake, or a loaf of bread. At other times, he will barely eat at all. When asked about it, Potter will merely shrug. They don’t talk about what happened in those three months before Snape found him. Doing so only causes arguments.

The bruises, however, speak for themselves.

Snape still cannot shrug off his guilt; his anger. He pretends to study Harry’s delicate wrist.

“I do feel a bit funny,” Harry says, half to himself.

“I can feed tomorrow,” Snape says, starting to release Harry’s wrist.

“No, it’ll pass. That soup tasted so awful. I think it isn’t sitting right. I don’t know why it’s such a surprise, but… Draco’s an awful cook.”

Snape barks out a laugh.

“No, you’re right – it isn’t a surprise.”

Potter grins. Then shivers.

“Still feel shite, though. But you go on – there’s no point both of us feeling like crap.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Snape snorts.

“Give me a little while, then,” Potter sighs. “I’m sure it’ll pass.”

Snape kisses his wrist.

 

~

 

As the moon climbs higher in the sky, Harry lies under Snape, legs parted. Snape leans up on his elbows atop him, sliding his cock slowly in and out of Harry’s quivering body.

They are both bare; Harry clutches at the white sheets and keens softly as Snape mouths open kisses over the boy’s sharp collar bones.

Snape’s hands slip under Harry’s back, clutching the boy closer. Harry lifts his ankles, crossing them in the small of Snape’s back, over his buttocks, and loops his wrists about Snape’s neck.

Snape’s hair falls into their faces, tickling Harry’s eyes and nose and cheeks.

Harry turns his head, a silent invitation.

Snape bites down.

 

~

 

**Blood! Vicious pain and dark, thick blood, like red syrup.**

**Screams - horrific, terrified screaming!**

**Flesh tears.**

**Footsteps on stone steps; doors burst open.**

**Harry crawls up the stone steps, head spinning. His neck still leaking blood and his mouth damp and torn.**

**All he can think of is getting to a place where his dead body will at least be found; where he won’t be left to rot for weeks…**

**“Please, no,” he moans, when his shaking hands falter, only a metre from the top of the basement steps.**

**His body is so weak, his head so fuzzy; he feels like he is crawling through a thick, oppressive fog. Exhausted; yet his heart is pounding so hard in his chest, battering against his ribcage like a bird fighting to burst free...**

**As the world goes black and his vision blurs, Harry’s last sight is of unnaturally bright wand light streaming down the steps. He so nearly made it –**

**“OH MY GOD!” someone screams. “Potter?”**

**“Out of the way, Malfoy!”**

**Heavy footsteps. The swish of red robes.**

**“He’s covered in blood – something bit him! Was it Snape? Oh my God, it was Snape! Snape’s here, he’s hiding here!”**

**“Malfoy, will you move? Harry, open your eyes, can you hear us?”**

**Harry passes out.**

 

~

 

He risks opening just one eye. One side of his head hurts like hell, so he keeps that eye firmly closed.

His vision is blurred and shaky.

He decides he’s probably not dead, if his head hurts this much. He tries to move his arm, but it feels like moving through molasses, and exhaustion takes over. The hand flops back down onto the bed.

“He moved his hand – Harry? Look, his eye’s open! Harry, it’s Hermione! Ron’s here too, you’re ok, you’re safe here -”

“Water,” Harry murmurs.

Water is pressed into his questing fingers.

“Harry… I know you’re unwell, but we need to talk about who… did this to you? It was Severus.”

“Sounds like you already know,” Harry says, frowning.

“I needed to hear it from you. It’s ok, he’s not here any more.”

“Where is he?” Harry gasped.

“Azkaban.”

“What? No!” Harry scrambles up wildly, head thundering.

“What do you mean, no?” Ron interjects, harshly. “That scumbag deserves all he gets!”

“He didn’t… Didn’t mean it,” Harry finishes, weakly.

“What rubbish,” Hermione snaps, then colours. “I’m sorry, Harry, but…”

“Has he been tested for drugs?” Harry demands.

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t think it was him. Something had happened to him.”

There is a collective sigh.

“Isn’t that just wishful thinking? You sound like you’ve been Confunded, even! Maybe, Vampires go feral with lust like that every time!”

“What, and he spent months trying to find me, looked after me all the way back through Europe - all for one violent half hour? We’re in love, Ron!”

“He isn’t human, he’s a monster – that’s what they do! If he can’t control himself -”

“It doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t seen how he’s been when we’re alone – he’s nothing but respectful -”

“Harry, I’m sorry. You know he was released to find you. Well, now he’s been arrested again… He’ll never get out this time. They’re going to destroy him.”

 

~

 

The chains bite. They bite into Snape’s biceps, his wrists, his ankles. His neck.

His fangs have been filed down. Some of his hair has been pulled out. His tongue is bitten, and his face bruised, but they heal. Once the injuries disappear, fresh ones are inflicted.

Snape does not fight it. He knows he deserves every humiliation. He just wishes he could… remember what he had done.

His last memory is of Potter gasping beneath him – but that had not been a noise of pain, surely? Snape had been kissing his young man’s neck and shoulders as he made love to him. And then… nothing but blood, everywhere. The taste of it in his mouth; the metallic stench of blood all over the sheets. Stains that would not come out. The screams that Snape had not heard at the time, but that came back to haunt him after.

What had happened? How had he lost control like that?

The cell door opens. Snape struggles sit up, but it is Draco who enters, not Potter.

“Draco?” Snape asks, in confusion.

“I had to see you,” Draco hisses, stealing into the room and pulling the door almost closed, furtively.

“Have you seen Harry?” Snape begs, looking up in desperation, eyes searching Draco’s pinched face.

Draco, however, refuses to make eye contact. He crosses to the window, drawing a thin cloak about his hunched shoulders.

“He’s in the hospital, still.”

“Shite,” Snape groans, face twisting in agony.

“You really did a number on him,” Draco sighs.

“I cannot understand how – Draco, can you?”

“I dunno… Do you think it’s a Vampire sex thing?”

“What?”

“You know… when you come, you lose control?”

“No, I’ve come in him before, and never – sorry,” Snape adds, at Draco’s sick choke.

“Well, you’ve lost him now,” Draco shrugs. “For good.”

“But I just don’t understand what I did!”

“Got yourself some sweet love from your little bitch, by the sounds of it -” Draco snaps. He turns; approaches Snape with fast, measured steps. Kneels before him.

“It will pain me to watch you die. But it would be worse pain to watch you live with him. You understand. Goodbye, Snape.”

 

~

 

No matter how loudly he screams, nobody comes. Days pass like this – days where he is chained in the same position: before an open window. The sun flays his skin, burns it off with tongues of fire. Each night, he lays his cheek against the cool stones, panting even though he does not need the breath. Anything to distract himself as he feels his body heal anew, only to be stung again come dawn.

The weeks drag on. An ocean of time.

When Potter comes for him, it is nightfall. Snape’s skin still smokes. His lashes leave blooded smears on his cheeks with each blink.

“I’m going to kill Draco.”

Moments later, a hand soothes against his bloodied cheek.

“Hey,” Harry whispers.

Snape raises his head, fangs flicking out in spite of himself. Useless stubs now – he tries to conceal his humiliation behind his hair.

Harry gently tucks it away; soothes his cheeks; pets his hair and nose.

“He ran straight to the Ministry, you know, the morning after we arrived at Malfoy Manor? There never was a reward placed on you, for a start. He was in there asking all sorts of questions, trying to find out if you were still wanted for murder. Apparently, when he heard you weren’t, he got all… upset.”

Snape listens, in silence. Just the sound of Harry’s voice soothes his battered soul.

“So he comes back, drugs me – remember I was feeling funny for about an hour that evening, then it went away? He knew it would only be a matter of time before you fed from me - and it was a poison to affect you, not me. To make you unable to control the Vampire side of you. Which is why you attacked me. Draco’s straight down the Ministry again – murder, murder! Turns you in like a shot.”

“I know,” Snape chokes out.

“You… do? How?”

“He came to see me.”

“The fucker!

“He did it because he couldn’t stand to see us together. Am I free?” Snape asks, attempting to sit up and feeling his burnt skin crackle. “If you know all this, has he confessed?”

Harry is silent.

“Oh. I see,” Snape says, softly. “How long have I got left?”

“They’re all saying you need to be destroyed, that this is one injury too many! You’ve violated the terms of your parole. I don’t know how to fight them again.”

Snape nods. It is only what he expected.

“I am ready to die. I have known you. I can want for no more.”

Potter, however, kneels before him and takes Snape’s face in both palms.

“You remember… That other-reality potion I offered you? Ages ago? Your one? Well, when you refused it, we sort of… kept it. It’s one of five, am I correct?”

“It was,” Snape murmurs, confused. He reaches out for some part of Harry to hold on to.

Harry sits back and gives him his hand; entwines his thin fingers with Snape’s raw ones.

With the other hand, he draws the phial from his pocket.

“I need… I need for you to tell me exactly what those five were.”

“Why?”

“I need to know! Please.”

So Snape tell him, in soft whispers, their fingers linking. When he has finished, Potter’s grasp on his cold hand is tighter, but Potter’s head hangs low toward his knees. Snape wonders what thoughts weigh the young man down.

“So… The worst risk is that… What if this, in this phial, is the one where Voldemort has won?”

Snape sighs.

“I think the colour of that potion was slightly darker – of course, I have none of the others to compare it to now. But why does all this matter?”

“They won’t let us be together here,” Potter mutters, clearly lost in his own whirl of thoughts. “In this… reality. I don’t want to be here and watch them… destroy you.”

“You will move on,” Snape grits out. The thought of Potter – Harry – in a clinch with another man; linking hands with another man, is unbearable. The pain alone would kill even the strongest man, and Snape has nothing else to live for.

In that moment, he almost has sympathy for Draco.

“I won’t,” Harry growls, head snapping up sharply, hurt glinting in his eyes. “I can’t. Which is why I needed to know… what I might be facing.”

“Facing?”

Harry grips Snape’s hands so hard that Snape can see veins and nerves and white knuckles popping and straining against the skin.

“When I come with you. We’re both going to drink the potion.”

Snape feels like he has been plunged underwater. Everything slows. Sounds become deeper, resonating. The light blurs into mist. His dead heart lurches in his chest, and muscles sinews straining to restart.

“Speak, please! Snape?”

“You know I cannot allow that,” Snape blurts out, throat so dry and closed, as if an animal had crawled into his mouth and lay dying. “You were my slave in some of those.”

“How would it work? Would we take the place of the versions of ourselves there?” Potter is ignoring him, skirting the issue.

“Something like that, yes. It is you, but in another body. You retain both sets of memories. It is… disconcerting at first. The body you leave behind here remains in a deep sleep until you return. If you never did, I presume it would never wake. But Harry, please, you were my slave. Please understand that I do not wish that for you.”

“I’m sure you’d take care of me. We’d be together -”

“What if it is the reality where the Dark Lord has -”

“We’d cope,” Potter growls, in a tone that brooks no refusal. “Defeat him again if we had to.”

Snape scoffs; rolls his eyes. Like it was so easy the first time.

“I don’t know!” Harry’s fingers burst out of Snape’s hold; the boy grips at his own head in frustration, fingers digging into his scalp. “But I’d be yours. Surely that counts for something?”

“It would mean everything to me!” Snape snarls, then breaks into a coughing fit. “But I never wanted it to be under any of those… circumstances.”

“Well there’s no nice option! You said you didn’t want to go to one of those realities before because it was me that you wanted – well I’m offering to come with you!”

“I don’t want to… debase you like that.”

“You’d rather leave me instead? You’re forgetting – the fifth one. The one you said you had in your robes when Nagini attacked you. What if this,” Potter shakes the phial before Snape’s face eagerly, “is that one?”

“Then… it would be bliss. But life never works out that way.”

“It might! I’m going to be optimistic!”

“Foolhardy, more like.”

“Now, is this phial enough? Will it take both of us?”

Snape glances at it. In an instant, he knows what he ought to do.

But what he wants to do… That is another thing entirely.

“I should say no,” he hisses, “and drink it in one.”

“Please don’t leave me behind,” Potter whispers. “Will it… take me too?”

Snape’s sigh is bone weary.

“Yes,” he admits. “God, I… Harry,” he blurts out, “My love. My hea… How can I let you do this?”

“Because you love me. And I love you. I’ll drink half first, then you have to promise to follow?”

Snape holds out one hand again, burnt fingers straining. Harry links their fingers; grips tightly. He does not seem to mind the blood, the broken skin.

Even though he does not know where they are going, Snape hopes it is the one he chose, the one he had in his pocket that night in the shack, when he should have died. There, they would find peace.

Even if it is not, he will be with Harry. His Harry.

That is all he could ever have hoped for.

 

~

 

On the floor of a cell in Azkaban prison, two figures lie in repose. One figure chained to the stone wall, slumped awkwardly towards the other, who is curled lovingly at his feet.

They never will wake, now.

The spirits within have fled together, like doves from a cage. There will never be a funeral, for the bodies they have left still breathe, empty shells of what they once were. The Vampire body has been thrown off, defeated finally, and that of the young man, battered and scarred, in the same way, replaced for one treated far more gently.

Where the sparks of life within have flown to, nobody in this dark place knows.

All they see are the empty phial, the sleeping figures, and the pair of clasped hands that joins them.

 

FIN.

_‘Your eyes close to me by fog_

_And I awake and arise_

_As the light in your eyes_

_Whose heavy lids close on me_

_My world, my life_

_They close on me_

_And I am not_

_No longer_

_They open_

_And I spring up their wish_

_Like a field of flowers_

_You close your eyes and I die_

_You close your eyes and I die_

_Whilst others in sleep follow lambs_

_I look at my hands_

_And count the Sun making another scar across my sky_

_And I close my eyes._ ’

 

‘Your Eyes Close’ by Michael Cashmore, sung by Antony Hegarty.

 

 

Opening lyrics from ‘Broken’ by Jake Bugg.


End file.
